Cookies Policy

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all websites this site uses cookies, which are small files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or certain elements of the site's functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/about-cookies

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

This site offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users. From time to time we offer user surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages. When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third-party cookies you might encounter through this site. This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web to help us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including Facebook and Linkedin will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Opting out of cookie usage

If you want to control which cookies you accept. You can configure your browser to accept all cookies or to alert you every time a cookie is offered by a website's server. Most browsers automatically accept cookies. You can set your browser option so that you will not receive cookies and you can also delete existing cookies from your browser. You may find that some parts of the site will not function properly if you have refused cookies.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit http://www.aboutcookies.org. Please be aware that if you do not configure your browser you will accept cookies provided by this website. How to see cookies that you have accepted? You can configure your browser to accept all cookies or to alert you every time a cookie is offered by a website's server.