We put small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

  • measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again

We use cookies but these aren’t used to identify you personally.

How cookies are used on this website

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use the website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements, eg improving site search.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • the pages you visit
  • how long you spend on each page
  • how you got to the site
  • what you click on while you’re visiting the site

We don’t collect or store your personal information (eg your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are.

We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Universal Analytics

Name / Purpose / Expires
_ga / This helps us count how many people visit by tracking if you’ve visited before / 2 years
_gat / Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made / 10 minutes

Google Analytics

Name / Purpose / Expires
_utma / Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to our website or to a certain page / 2 years
_utmb / This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on our website/ 30 minutes
_utmc / This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser / when you close your browser
_utmz / This tells us how you reached our website (eg from another website or a search engine) / 6 months