COOKIE POLICY

INFORMATION ABOUT OUR USE OF COOKIES

Our websites uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our websites.  This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our websites and also allows us to improve our site.  By continuing to browse our websites you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

A ‘cookie’ is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer – if you agree.  Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

Our website cookies help us:

  • estimate our audience size and usage pattern
  • store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our Site according to your individual interests
  • speed up your searches, and
  • recognise you when you return to our website.

We use (or may use) the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies.  These are cookies that are required for the operation of our websites.  They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our websites.
  • Analytical / performance cookies.  They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our websites when they are using it.  This helps us to improve the way our websites works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies.  These are used to recognise you when you return to our websites.  This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (if any).
  • Targeting cookies.  These cookies record your visit to our websites, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed.  We will use this information to make our websites and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests.  We may also share this information with third parties, for this purpose.

Please note that third parties (including for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies over which we have no control.  These cookies are likely to be “analytical / performance” or “targeting” cookies. 

We use Google analytics cookies our website which allows us for tracking purposes to record the number of visits to our website and the pages that visitors have visited.  This helps us understand general traffic to our website.  This process collects data in an anonymous form, which will help us to develop our site and make improvements.

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies.  However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) then you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.  Please visit www.allaboutcookies.org which will tell you have to remove cookies.

For further information about cookies please visit:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/about-cookies. 

If you would prefer to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites then please visit:-  https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout