Cookies
About cookies
We put small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.
Cookies are used to:
- remember your progress
- measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
Cookies aren’t used to identify you personally.
You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer.
Find out more about how to manage cookies.
How we use cookies
You may see a pop-up welcome message when you first visit this site. We’ll store a cookie so that your computer knows you’ve seen it and knows not to show it again.
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
| cookieMessage | Saves a message to let us know that you’ve seen our message | 1 month |
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics, or Google Analytics 4)
We use Google Analytics (or Google Analytics 4) 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.
Google Analytics (or Google Analytics 4) 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 personal information 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 (or Google Analytics 4) sets the following cookies:
Universal Analytics
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
| _ga | This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before | 2 years |
| _gid | This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before | 24 hours |
| _gat | Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made | 10 minutes |
You can opt out of Google Analytics (or Google Analytics 4) cookies.
Google DoubleClick
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
| Preferences | These cookies allow our websites to remember information that changes the way the site behaves or looks, such as your preferred language or the region you are in. For instance, by remembering your region, a website may be able to provide you with local weather reports or traffic news. These cookies can also assist you in changing text size, font, and other parts of web pages that you can personalize. Loss of the information stored in a preference cookie may make the website experience less functional but should not prevent it from working. Most Google users will have a preferences cookie called ‘NID’ in their browsers. A browser sends this cookie with requests to Google’s sites. The NID cookie contains a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language, how many search results you wish to have shown per page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on. | 30 Days |
| Security | We use security cookies to authenticate users, prevent fraudulent use of login credentials, and protect user data from unauthorized parties. For example, we use cookies called ‘SID’ and ‘HSID’ which contain digitally signed and encrypted records of a user’s Google account ID and most recent sign-in time. The combination of these two cookies allows us to block many types of attack, such as attempts to steal the content of forms that you complete on web pages. | 30 Days |
| Processes | Process cookies help make the website work and deliver services that the website visitor expects, like navigating around web pages or accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, the website cannot function properly. For example, we use a cookie called ‘lbcs’ which makes it possible for Google Docs to open many Docs in one browser. Blocking this cookie would prevent Google Docs from operating correctly. | 30 Days |
| Advertising | We use cookies to make advertising more engaging to users and more valuable to publishers and advertisers. Some common applications of cookies are to select advertising based on what’s relevant to a user; to improve reporting on campaign performance; and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen. | 30 Days |
| Session State | Websites often collect information about how users interact with a website. This may include the pages users visit most often and whether users get error messages from certain pages. We use these so-called ‘session state cookies’ to help us improve our services, in order to improve our users’ browsing experience. | 30 Days |
YouTube videos
We use YouTube to provide videos on this site. YouTube sets cookies when you visit this page.
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
| _use_hitbox | This is a randomly generated number that identifies your browser | When you close your browser |
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | Lets YouTube count the views of embedded YouTube videos | 9 months |
Privacy policy
We collect certain information or data about you when you use of this website. This includes your IP address, details of which version of web browser you used, information on you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques to help us improve the website.
This helps us to improve the site by monitoring how you use it. We can’t personally identify you using your data.
Keeping your data secure
Transmitting information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t guarantee the security of your data. Any data you transmit is at your own risk.
We won’t share your information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your details to other websites.
Disclosing your information
We may pass on your information if we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we have to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements. This includes exchanging information with other government departments for legal reasons.
Links to other websites
This website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website. If you go to another website from this one, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.
Following a link to this website from another website
If you come to this website from another website, we may receive personal information about you from the other website. You should read the privacy policy of the website you came from to find out more about this.