Cookie Policy
  1. What are cookies?

A “cookie” is a piece of information that is stored on your computer, other device, or a phone, and which records your navigation of a website in order that when you revisit that website it can present tailored options to you based upon the stored information about your last visit. You can normally alter the settings of your browser to prevent acceptance of cookies.

Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system. They help to make your experience on our website as smooth as possible.

  1. How do we use cookies?

We may use cookies:

  • to help make our website work as you would expect as a user
  • to save you having to log in every time you use our site
  • To remember your setting during and between visits
  • To improve the speed/security of our site
  • To personalize our site to help you get what you need faster

We do not use cookies:

  • to collect personally identifiable information
  • to pass to third parties

We also use “cookies” to monitor site user traffic patterns and site usage. This helps us to understand how our users use our websites so that we can develop and improve the design, layout and functionality of the sites. Please see section 7. on Matomo Analytics for more information on this.

There are different kinds of cookies with different functions:

Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer, device or phone, during your web session. They are automatically deleted when the browser is closed.  They usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page. They do not collect any information from your computer, device or phone.

Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is one stored as a file on your computer, device or phone, and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again.  We do not use persistent cookies other than for Matomo Analytics (please see section 7. on Matomo Analytics).

We never use third-party or unsatisfactory cookies on our site.

The cookies we use are explained below:

  1. Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential to enable you to use the site effectively and therefore cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available to you on our site cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.

  1. Performance cookies

These cookies enable us to monitor and improve the performance of our site. For example they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.  We use Matomo Analytics for this purpose (see section 7.). These cookies do not collect information that identifies a visitor, as all information these cookies collect is anonymous and is only used to improve how our site works.

  1. Functionality cookies

These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced features. For instance, a website may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the policies you buy. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, font and other parts of web pages that you can customize. They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as viewing a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymized. They do not gather any information about you that could be used for advertising or remember where you have been on the internet.

  1. How to reject cookies

Note that most web browsers will accept cookies, but if you would rather that we did not collect data in this way you can choose to accept all, or some, or reject cookies in your browser’s privacy settings.  Rejecting all cookies means that certain features cannot then be provided to you and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all our website’s features. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

For more information generally on cookies, including how to disable them, please refer to aboutcookies.org (http://www.allaboutcookies.org/).  You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer, your device, or the handset manual of your phone.

  1. Matomo Analytics

This website uses Matomo Analytics, a free and open source  web analytics application developed by a team of international developers. It tracks online visits to the website and displays reports on these visits for our analysis. Matomo Analytics uses cookies to help the website analyze how users use the site. Matomo Analytics is designed with privacy in mind. All data collected is stored only within our own MySQL database, no other business (or Matomo team member) can access any of this information, and logs or report data will never be sent to other servers by Matomo. The source code of the software is open-source so hundreds of people have reviewed it to ensure it is secure and keeps your data private. Matomo can be configured to follow even the strictest of privacy laws. By using this website, you consent to our tracking and analyzing the traffic on the site in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

For more information on Matomo Analytics, including their privacy policy, please visit https://matomo.org/privacy/