Cookies make websites work better
Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by websites or sometimes by emails. They provide useful information to companies, which helps in all sorts of ways. For you, it means you can use the site more efficiently and save time by not having to re-enter your details each time you visit. They also make sure you receive the most relevant information from us. Cookies help us to analyse how our customers interact with our sites so we can make improvements.
Broadly, we use the following types of cookies on our websites:
- Session cookies that are deleted after each visit.
- Persistent cookies that remain in place across multiple visits to our sites.
- Third party cookies that are used by our approved business partners.
Some of these cookies are essential and some are optional.
Some cookies are essential
Certain cookies are necessary in order for you to use our websites. These are used 'in-session' each time you visit and then expire when you leave the site. They're not stored on your computer and they don't contain any personal data. However, you can delete them via your browser if you wish to, but this will restrict the functions that you're able to carry out on our sites. For more information about how to disable cookies in your browser please visit the about cookies website (http://www.allaboutcookies.org).
Some cookies are optional
These cookies are usually supplied by our business partners and help us to filter out irrelevant messages or pop-ups and to make sure that we only send you information that's interesting and relevant to you.
In more detail, here's a list of cookie categories and how we use them:
Session cookies - these enable you to carry out some essential functions on our sites, such as maintaining log in details for the session or a transaction. They also help by minimising the need to transfer information across the internet. They are not stored on your computer and they expire when you terminate your browser session.
Persistent cookies - these enable us to uniquely identify you to help you to login again after timeout. This is often used when you have been inactive on the site for more than 30 minutes. It helps you to re-login to your visit. Often the lifespan of this cookie is 1 day.
Tracking cookies - These enable us to recognise repeat visitors to the site. By matching an anonymous, randomly generated identifier, we're able to record specific browsing information such as how you arrive at the site, the pages you view, options you select, and the path you take through the site. By monitoring this information we're able to make improvements to our sites.
DoubleClick cookies - provided by our online advertising supplier, these cookies are used to serve our internet advertisements on other sites. Some of our web pages may contain advertising images that help us understand how users interact on these pages. They may also provide DoubleClick with information about the interaction.
A table of the cookies used on this site can be found at the end of this policy.
Third Party cookies
When you visit our site you may notice some cookies that aren't related to us. If you go on to a website that contains embedded content, for example from YouTube, you may be sent cookies from these websites. We don't control the setting of these cookies, so we suggest you check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.
You can accept or block cookies
As explained above under 'Some cookies are essential' you can block any cookies from any website through your browser settings however please be aware that this will affect the functionality of the site if you chose to block cookies as we can only provide you with certain personalised features of the website by using them.
Find out more
You'll find more information about cookies at http://www.allaboutcookies.org, which gives details on how to delete cookies from your computer. For information on how to do this on your mobile phone browser, please see your handset manual.
By using our online services you agree that we can place these cookies on your device.