Cookies on Our Community Website

This page contains information on what cookies are, how cookies are used by this website, how to switch cookies off in your browser and some useful links where you can read more about the subject.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files which are placed on your computer/mobile device (such as your smart phone or tablet) as you browse the web. Websites are able to read and write these files, allowing them to store information such as user preferences (e.g. language). Cookies provide a “memory” for a website and are necessary to ensure effective operation and improved user experiences. 

Please read on for more details regarding the types of cookies that we use, as well as how to disable cookies and further resources about cookies.

How does this website use cookies?

Visiting pages in this website may generate the following cookies:

Website Experience Cookies (Functionality & Advertising Cookies):

We have two cookies of this nature which are in place to help to improve our customers’ experiences of our website; these are commonly known as persistent cookies. The cookies that we currently have are:

  • We store a cookie which is activated when you tick the ‘remember me’ box when you log in – this will save your details to assist you when you are logging in (any usernames will be shown when you click on the username box and the relevant password will appear once a username is selected). This cookie expires after 90 days if you do not return to this site
  • We store a special Session ID cookie so that if you do not log out of your account you will be automatically logged in next time you visit it. This cookie expires after 14 days if you do not return to the site.
  • Once an individual has opted into use of cookies by clicking the continue button on the banner at the top of the website a cookie will be stored to ensure that this banner will not reappear. This cookie expires after 24 months.

Anonymous Analytics Cookies (Performance Cookies):

Each time that a user visits our website, third party web analytics software generates an anonymous analytics cookie. These cookies can tell us a range of insightful information such as whether a visitor has been to our site before, and which pages on our site are most popular with visitors. These cookies are used purely for statistical purposes – we do not use these at all to identify individuals.

What happens if I disable cookies?

This depends on which cookies you chose to disable. In the case of this website, it may affect the usability, but should not stop you from using the website. 

How to disable cookies

If you would like to disable cookies you will need to change your website browser setting to reject cookies. This process is different depending on which browser that you use. Please read on for instructions of how to disable cookies in the most popular browsers. We have also linked to the browser help pages for further information.

Microsoft Internet Explorer:

  1. Choose the menu “tools” then “Internet Options”
  2. Click on the “privacy” tab
  3. Select the setting the appropriate setting. You can be more specific about your preferences by clicking the ‘Advanced’ button and then selecting to ‘override’ the cookie handling.

Mozilla Firefox:

  1. Choose the menu “tools” then “Options”
  2. Click on the icon “privacy”
  3. Use the drop down menu and tick boxes to set your preferences. If you would like to set them in more detail select the “use custom settings for history”.

Chrome:

  1. Click the little spanner image in the top right hand corner of the browser  
  2. Click on the “Tools” menu and select “Clear browsing data” – click “cancel”
  3. Click the “Under the Bonnet” tab and click “Content Settings”
  4. Choose your preferred settings under the “Cookie setting” title

Safari:

  1. Choose Preferences from Safari menu
  2. Select Security icon
  3. Cookie settings are shown in window
  4. Choose your preferred settings

Opera 6.0 and further: 

  1. Choose the menu Files”> “Preferences”
  2. Privacy

Other useful cookie information

Please visit the following links to learn more about cookies and how they are used:

The IAB has provided the following website to give information specifically about privacy issues around Internet advertising:

 

For further legal information about privacy issues, you may find these links useful: