Cookies

We may store information about your visit using cookies (files which are sent by us to your computer or other access device) which we can access when you visit our corporate site in future. We do this for a number of reasons, such as:

  • recognising your preferences so you don't need to re-enter them on every visit
  • tracking progress through online applications
  • monitoring site performance and content popularity.

In addition, some third-party services featured on our site may also use cookies for similar reasons. All cookies contain anonymous data and cannot be used to identify you.

By using our site, we assume that you're happy to use cookies but if desired, cookies can be disabled through your browser settings - please view your browser's options or help pages for more information. Please note, however, that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.

Cookies in use

We use first-party cookies to store user preferences and provide statistical analysis, while third-party services use cookies to store setting and provide additional functionality.

First-party

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics throughout our site to monitor site performance, content popularity and other quality indicators. Using this service may set up to five cookies from our site, all of which contain anonymous data:

  • __utma, which contains a unique ID to record visits from the same user and expires after two years
  • __utmb, to record the start of a session and expires after 30 minutes
  • __utmc, a session cookie which only lasts while you view the site
  • __utmv, only used if more custom, detailed statistics are required
  • __utmz, to record where a visitor came from previously and expires after six months.

More information on the use of cookies for Google Analytics can be found at Cookies & Google Analytics and Safeguarding your Google Analytics data.

AddThis

We use AddThis across the site to allow sharing of content between different services. Using this feature sets one cookie, __atuvc, which expires after two years and is set in accordance with AddThis's Privacy Policy.

Other

Some of our pages are used for online services (such as making payments and submitting applications), which use 'session' cookies to login or progress through application stages, and are only present within the session. These cookies are strictly necessary to provide the service that the user has requested.

Third-party

In addition to the cookies above, some third-party services we use also store cookies.

Google

Our site uses Google Custom Search and Google Calendar, both of which set cookies to store user preferences. The cookies - NID, PREF and S - expire between six months and two years, and are set in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy.

Twitter

On some pages, we display a Twitter feed for a user account with a 'Follow' option. This plug-in sets five cookies – _twitter_sess, guest_id, k, pid and original_referer – which range from sessional to two years, and are set in accordance with Twitter's Privacy Policy.

YouTube

Some of our pages displayed embedded YouTube videos, which set two cookies: PREF and VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE. Please note that YouTube, as part of Google, uses Google's Privacy Policy.