Information about our use of cookies
If you do not accept our use of cookies please disable them following our guidance below.
1. What are 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 uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
Although this notice refers to the general term ‘cookie’, it also applies to similar tracking technologies that we may use, such as ‘web beacons’, ‘clear GIFs’ and ‘pixel tags’.
You can find out more about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org.
2. What cookies do we use on our website?
We may use the following cookies from time to time:
- Essential cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website.
- Analytical/performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website 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 website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website 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) will have their own cookie policies. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
You can find out more about how Google stores, uses and manages this data via Google's Privacy and Terms.
The table below provides more information about the cookies we use and why:
| Name of cookie | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
| _ga | Google Analytics | Generates non- identifiable statistical analysis on how a visitor users the website | session |
| _gat | Google Tag Manager | Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate (in other words, control the level of traffic through the website) | session |
| _gd# | Google Tag Manager | Container for Google tag manager | session |
| _gid | Google Analytics (for an overview of privacy at Google click here) | Generates unidentifiable statistical analysis on how a visitor users the website | session |
| _hjid | Hotjar | Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | 365 days |
| _hjRecordingLastActivity | Hotjar | This should be found in Session storage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a visitor recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the visitor performs an action that Hotjar records). | session |
| _hjTLDTest | Hotjar | When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. | session |
| _lo_uid | Google Tag Manager | Tracks non-identifiable click events on the website | session |
| _lorid | Google Tag Manager | Tracks non-identifiable click events on the website | session |
| Lo_session | Google Tag Manager | Tracks non-identifiable click events on the website | session |
| Lo_session_in | Google Tag Manager | Tracks non-identifiable click events on the website | session |
Our site uses two types of cookies, session and persistent. Session cookies are only stored during your active session with us, upon closing your browser these will be removed from your system. Persistent cookies have a specified lifespan and are not removed from your system upon closing your browser and are kept for future visits.
3. Turning cookies off/changing your cookie settings
You 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) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
You may opt-out of Google’s analytics cookies by visiting Google’s opt-out page - https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Click on the links below to find out how to change your cookie settings in:
Google Analytics
Like many websites, we use Google Analytics to allow us to anonymously track page views across our site, and provide site statistics. These cookies are persistent, and once added to your computer unless removed by yourself, will not be deleted until the end of their lifespan.
Google offers more information on how to safeguard your data.
Last updated: October 2020
