What is a cookie?

Cookies are small text files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website. Once a cookie is saved on your computer, only the website that created the cookie can read it.

Cookies are generally divided into mandatory and non-essential:

1. Mandatory cookies being those needed to progress through site functionality
2. Non-essential cookies being used for analytics, cookies from advertisers or third parties, including affiliates and those that identify a user when they returns to the website.

Why are cookies used?

We use cookies to store information about how you use our website and to help provide you with the best browsing experience we can. Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit or for repeat visits.

We use cookies to store information about how you use our website and to help provide you with the best browsing experience we can. Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit or for repeat visits.

Our mandatory cookies:

• Store your preferences on cookies whilst using our site.
• Make our website work as you’d expect.

Our non essential cookies:

• Enable us to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task.
• Improve the speed/security of the site.
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook.
• Help us to understand how people are using our website so that we can improve it for you.
• Measure how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they work correctly and respond quickly.

The law says we must:

• Tell you that the cookies are there
• Explain what the cookies are doing and why
• Get your permission to store a cookie on your device. (Although we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site.)

More details about cookies on this site

We use various session (or temporary) cookies, which allow you to move through the pages of our site quickly and easily. These cookies are stored in the temporary memory of your browser but are not usually retained once you have closed your browser. This session data is under the essential use category.

Links to other sites

All links are provided for information and convenience only. No responsibility is accepted for any content or programs provided or used in any other websites you open from within this website. We cannot provide more information about the cookies these sites use and suggest the reading of their individual cookie policy pages for further information.

More about cookies

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit the UK Governments Legislation pages (opens in a new tab).