An introduction to cookies
A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.
Cookies deployed by our website:
ensure that functionality operates as intended
remember your choices and preferences during and between visits
allow you to share pages via social network widgets like Facebook, Twitter and AddThis
allow you to interact with our website by leaving comments or opinions
post enquiries via our Anti-Spam enquiry form
track your visit for statistical analysis, allowing us to improve the usability, speed and security of our website
Cookies are not deployed to:
collect any personal identifiable information (without your express permission)
collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
pass data to advertising networks
pass personally identifiable data to third parties
pay sales commissions
Your consent for cookie deployment by our website
Upon your visit to our website, you may have noticed our link at the bottom of the page alerting you to the use of cookies by our website. In compliance with the 2011 EU Cookie Law, our website operates on an ‘Implied Consent’ basis. This means that we will assume that you have opted-in for our website to deploy cookies until you choose to deactivate them within your browser settings or via the instructions below. By default, the majority of popular web browsers automatically permit websites to deploy cookies onto your device. Below you can learn more about the specific cookies deployed by our website, and how they can be disabled. For more information on the EU Cookie Law in the UK, we recommend visiting the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website where you can find the latest information, guidelines and advice on the EU Cookie Law.
Cookies used by our website
Social Network Sharing
We encourage users to share our content and/or like our on profile on the popular Social Media websites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. In order to make ‘Social Sharing’ accessible, our website utilises widgets either provided directly from the Social Networks and/or via amalgamative widgets from third parties such as AddThis. Cookies and privacy implications from the social networks vary and will be dependent on your nominated privacy settings with each Social Network. Social Sharing buttons will only deploy cookies if you are signed to that respective Social Network at the time of being on our website.
Analytical Tracking
Our website has Google Analytics installed which allows us to track and compile anonymous visitor statistics. The information collected ranges from simple traffic volume to the type of browser you are viewing our website with. This information is valuable to us not just for marketing analysis and quantification, but to improve the usability, security and load speed of our website content. Google Analytics is a popular, secure, flagship webmaster product from Google. The privacy and security of Google Analytics data is a high priority at Google that you can read more about on Google’s Analytics Data Safeguarding page. Google also offer a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on that will allow you to automatically Opt-out of all websites that track your activity via Google Analytics. No personal information is collected by Google Analytics.
Enquiry Forms
Visitors can choose to contact us via enquiry form(s) on our website. In order to prevent spam enquiries, we protect our forms with a ‘CAPTCHA’ challenge to ensure the submission is from a living person, rather than a computer bot. This CAPTCHA challenge creates a cookie that is used only to check the input response from the user is correct. The CAPTCHA cookie does not store any other information from your enquiry.
Cookie Consent Check
Upon your first visit to our website, you will notice a small banner on the page alerting you to the fact that cookies are being placed onto your computer by our website. In order for our website to remember your choice of opting-in, we store a cookie which expires after 14 days.
WordPress
Our website, either in full or in part, is built on the popular open-source CMS framework – WordPress. WordPress utilises cookies to allow visitors to register, login and comment on our website’s content. If you do not wish to participate in commenting on our website, WordPress will not deploy any cookies onto your device. Cookies will only be created by WordPress if you actively register or comment via the clear forms on our website.
Google Maps/Places
Our website may have our Google Maps/Places profile embedded within an iframe. Google Maps creates cookies that enable the functionality of their powerful mapping software. No personal information is stored or shared on the cookies deployed by Google Maps/Places.
How to disable cookies
Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings for all websites that you browse. You can disable cookie deployment completely by editing your browser settings, however in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website. To learn how to disable cookies on your preferred browser we recommend reading this advice posted by Google.
If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many antispyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. Learn more about antispyware software – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware. As mentioned earlier in this page you call also disable Google Analytics on all websites by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.