Cookie Information

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 first visit to our website, you may have noticed our banner 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.

• Cookie Consent Check

  As mentioned above, upon your first visit our website displays a banner at the top of the page alerting you about cookies being deployed by our website. In order for our website to remember your choice of opting-in, we store an anonymous cookie to remove the alert banner for 28 days. To prevent this cookie being stored, simply do not accept and close the alert. If you have already accepted the alert and you wish to remove the cookie, please clear your cookies within your browser settings.

• 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.

• 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

Actual cookies deployed

Below is a table of information which lists all cookies deployed and used on our website.

Cookie Category	Cookie Name	Cookie Description
Google	_utma	A Google Analytics cookie, which keeps track of the number of times, a visitor has been to the site, when their first visit was, and when their last visit occurred.
	_utmb	A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the exact moment when a visitor enters a site.
	_utmc	A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the exact moment when a visitor leaves the site.
	_utmv	Used for reporting in Google Analytics classifying the visitor.
	_utmz	A Google Analytics cookie which tracks where the visitor came from, what search engine was used, what link was clicked on, what keywords used, and where in the world the site was accessed from.
	PREF, NID	This cookie is set by Google Maps when you load a map of our location
AddThis	loc, uid/uit, psc, di/dt, atuvc/bt/ssc/ssh/sshs/xtc	Allows users to share content via Social Networking websites and email

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.