Cookie Policy
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your computer, mobile phone or tablet. These are known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
What are cookies?
Cookies are used to improve services for you by:
- Enabling a service to recognise your computer so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
- Recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
- Measuring how many people are using services, so that popular services can be made easier and faster to use
- Analysing anonymous data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better
What do cookies look like?
If you click on a cookie you'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the website server that gave you the cookie.
How to manage your cookies
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by this website, or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. Your browser is the way you access the internet for example Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how you can restrict or block cookies.
For information on how to restrict or block cookies on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.
Alternatively, you will also find details on how to restrict or delete cookies on a wide variety of browsers, as well as more general information about cookies, on the About Cookies website through the following link.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the way our website works for you.
How we use cookies
The cookies this website use are listed below along with details on why we use them and how long they will last.
Measuring Website Usage
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this website. We do this to make sure it’s meeting people's needs and to understand how we could meet those needs better.
Google Analytics store information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal details such as your name or address. We cannot identify who you are.
We do not allow Google to use or share any information we collect with other third parties.
Google Analytics
Name: _utma
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years
Name: _utmb
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes
Name: _utmc
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: when your browser closes
Name: _utmz
Typical Content: randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Expires: 6 months
Service Availability
Name: _utmc
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: when your browser closes