What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we may store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or device. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of the Site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse the Site and also allows us to improve the Site.

Cookies are used to improve services for you through, for example:

• enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task;
• recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested; and
• measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast

Types of cookies used

The Site uses the following types of cookies:

• Session cookie – this type of cookie allows websites to link the actions of a user during a browser session so that the website is able to store certain information whilst the user is browsing the site.
• Google Analytics cookies – Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the Site and volumes of usage. This is to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.

You can find more detailed information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the tables below:

Cookie Info Script cookie

Cookie	Purpose	Expires
CookieInfoScript	A Boolean value used to remember if the user has accepted the Cookie policy	No expiry

Google Analytics cookies

The information from the following cookies will be used by Google in accordance with Google’s privacy policy. For more information on the cookies set by Google Analytics please refer to the Google Analytics website:

Name	Purpose	Expiry
_ga	This is used to understand and differentiate between different users.	13 Months
_ga_<container-id>	Used to persist session state. Container ID is the identifier for the Google Analytics account being used.	13 Months
_gid	_gid has a different ID for each page set on, and a timestamp. This assists with plotting user journeys.	24 Hours