About cookies

You may have heard of internet cookies…you may know all about them. To confirm, cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites you visit.

Cookies allow us to identify you (or, more accurately, your computer) when you visit our website. Knowing how often people are visiting each page of our website helps us work out how and where to improve our website.

By continuing to use our website, you consent to the use of cookies (including third-party cookies) as described in this policy. This cookie policy is part of our Privacy policy.

Types of cookie

Categories

Necessary cookies help make our website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

Performance cookies help us understand how visitors interact with our websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.

Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display content and ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable.

Persistent cookies and session cookies

Persistent cookies remain on a visitor’s device for a set amount of time. This means for example that we can identify when a site visitor is a repeat visitor or new to us.

Session cookies are created temporarily and last for as long as your browser window is open, being automatically deleted after you close your browser. These allow us to link the actions of a user during a visit to the website, to provide a consistent experience.

The cookies we use

Details about the cookies we use are set out in the table below. Some of these are third party cookies – see the section on third party cookies below for more information.

Cookie Purpose             Duration 
PHPSESSID  

The PHPSESSID cookie is native to PHP and enables websites to store serialised state data. On the action website it is used to establish a user session and to pass state data via a temporary cookie, which is commonly referred to as a session cookie. As the PHPSESSID cookie has no timed expiry, it disappears when the session is closed.

 

             Session
has_js  

This cookie records whether your browser has JavaScript enabled.

 

             Session
_ga  

This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website.

 

              2 years
_gid  

This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website.

 

              1 day
__cfduid, optimizelyEndUserId  

These cookies are used by Cloudflare to support performance optimisation. They do not store any personally identifiable information.

 

              You can find Cloudflare’s privacy policy at                                     https://www.cloudflare.com/security-policy
cookie_notice  

This cookie is used to remember your preference for accepting the use of cookies.

 

 

Third party cookies

First party cookies are the cookies that are set by this website; third party cookies are set by other websites.

This website uses cookies provided by other organisations to support functions such as statistical performance analysis, rich media functionality and social sharing. These are third party cookies. You can read privacy policies from these third parties below:

Control your cookie settings

If you want, you can block cookies by changing the settings on your browser – we have set out below links to the ‘Help’ pages of some major browsers which explain how you can do this. Blocking the cookies we use may have an adverse impact upon the presentation of some or all of our website.

General guidance on how to manage your cookies can be found here:

Specific guidance on how to manage cookie options for common website browsers can be found here: