1. What is a cookie?

Most web sites use cookies to remember information about you and your preferences, either for the duration of your visit or for repeat visits. A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a web site, and that web site can then retrieve the contents of that cookie.

If we didn't use cookies, our web site would think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site.

Cookies may be set by the web site you are visiting ('first party cookies') or by other web sites which provide content on the page you are viewing ('third party cookies').

2. What cookies does our web site use?

Performance cookies

These cookies allow us to track the performance and usage of our web site with anonymised statistics. We use cookies to track your route around the site and use the statistics that these create to improve the web site's performance and user experience.

Cookie name	Cookie purpose	Cookie duration
_ga, _gat	These cookies are used by Google Analytics software to distinguish users. The information we gather includes but is not limited to how users interact with our web site, which pages are most frequently viewed, how frequently the users visit the web site, traffic source of user visit, demographics data (age and gender), location and device information (make and model). Any data collected is anonymous and used for statistical reporting only. Other cookies created by Google Analytics include _gid, AMP_TOKEN and _gac_<property-id>. These cookies store other randomly generated IDs and campaign information about the user.	Up to two years after last web site visit

We also sometimes embed photos and video content from third-party web sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr. As a result, when you visit one of our pages containing such content, you may be presented with cookies from these web sites.

We don't sell the information collected by cookies, nor do we disclose the information to third parties, except where required by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).

3. What to do if you don't want cookies to be set

If you don’t want web sites to store cookies on your computer, tablet or phone, you can modify your browser so that it asks for your permission when a web site wants to set a cookie, or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set. If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how.

For Google Analytics cookies, Google provide a Google Analytics opt-out tool which allows you to specify that you don't want to accept their cookies, not just for our site, but for all sites which use Google Analytics.

To find out more information and opt-out of third party cookies, please visit the relevant privacy and cookie policy pages on third-party web sites.