Cookies policy
What is a cookie?
Where services are delivered on the internet, small amounts of information are sometimes placed on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
These pieces of information are used to improve services through:
- 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
- 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
- analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better
How to control and delete cookies
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.
If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.
You can also visit All About Cookies or About Cookies for more information about removing cookies.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.
To view your cookie code, click on the cookie to open it. You will see a short list of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.
For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.
Some third party services embedded within this website set their own cookies. These are known as third party cookies because they are not set by our website. We have no control over the cookies that are set by third party services. To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.
Cookies used by our website
The following cookies are either used globally across our website or on multiple parts of the site.
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| ASP.NET_SessionId wordpress_logged_in_, wordpress_sec_ wordpress_test_cookie |
Session state Contains the user’s unique session ID in order to maintain the user’s state (eg. logged in/out) and any related preferences/settings. |
End of session |
| _utma | Google Analytics Contains a randomly generated number that is used to determine unique visitors to our site. |
02 years |
| _utmb | Google Analytics Contains a randomly generated number that works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time users spend on our site. |
02 years |
| _utmc | Google Analytics Contains a randomly generated number that works with _utmb to calculate when you close the average length of time users spend on our site your browser. |
02 years |
| _utmz | Google Analytics Contains a randomly generated number and information about how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search). |
02 years |
| __atuvc | AddThis – social sharing Used to make sure that website visitors see the updated count if they share a page and return to it before the AddThis share count cache is updated. The share count is not displayed on this website, but the cookie is still automatically by AddThis. |
End of session |
Name
ASP.NET_SessionId
wordpress_logged_in_,
wordpress_sec_
wordpress_test_cookie
Purpose
Session state
Contains the user’s unique session ID in order to maintain the user’s state (eg. logged in/out) and any related preferences/settings.
Expires
End of session
Name
_utma
Purpose
Google Analytics
Contains a randomly generated number that is used to determine unique visitors to our site.
Expires
02 years
Name
_utmb
Purpose
Google Analytics
Contains a randomly generated number that works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time users spend on our site.
Expires
02 years
Name
_utmc
Purpose
Google Analytics
Contains a randomly generated number that works with _utmb to calculate when you close the average length of time users spend on our site your browser.
Expires
02 years
Name
_utmz
Purpose
Google Analytics
Contains a randomly generated number and information about how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search).
Expires
02 years
Name
Purpose
AddThis – social sharing
Used to make sure that website visitors see the updated count if they share a page and return to it before the AddThis share count cache is updated. The share count is not displayed on this website, but the cookie is still automatically by AddThis.
Expires
__atuvc
End of session