Cookies are small simple text files which are stored on your device (computer, tablet, smartphone etc) when you visit a website. They are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device. Cookies are used by most modern websites, and in many cases are essential for the operation of the website. In particular, they are used to allow the website to ‘remember’ you, either for a single visit, as you move from one web page to another within the site (‘session cookies’), or for repeat visits, so that you are ‘recognised’ when you visit the website again from the same device (‘persistent cookies’). Another common use is to provide information to owners of the site about which pages have been visited, how long visitors have spent on a particular page, and so on.
Cookie Categories
Strictly necessary cookies – These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, services you have asked for or selected cannot be provided.
Performance cookies – These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies do not collect information that identifies a visitor. All the information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. This information is only used to improve content and how a website works.
Functionality cookies – These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personalized features. For instance, they may be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a news item or blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
Targeting or advertising cookies – These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help to measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. Quite often targeting and advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by other organisations.
How do we use cookies?
We use Google Analytics to provide statistics about how many people have visited the site. This data also includes such things as which pages users have visited, how long they stayed, which browser or device they were using, the city or town where they live, and other information — but no personally identifiable information is collected and all data is used purely for the purpose of making the website work better for you, its visitors. By using the site you agree to Google Analytics being used for this purpose. These are performance persistent cookies, named _ga, _gat and _gid.
Our hosting provider uses a load-balancer which adds cookies to identify the server in use. These strictly necessary session cookie, named DYNSRV and ADMINDYNSRV, used to improve performance of the website.
Our security system uses functionality cookies to ensure that only authorised users are allowed to access parts of the site. These cookies have names starting with cerber.
If you are logged into WordPress, a number of functionality cookies are set to record details of your session. These all have names beginning with wordpress or wp. You can find out more about these in the WordPress Codex.
We do not use any targeting or advertising cookies.
To support our content and provide richer information, we sometimes embed content from websites such as YouTube. As a result, when you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, YouTube you may be presented with cookies from these websites. We do not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the relevant third party website for more information about these.