Cookie policy

When you access services over the internet, this sometimes places small amounts of information on your device, for example your computer or mobile phone. The small amounts of information can include small files known as cookies. For more information about cookies, you can visit www.aboutcookies.org.uk.

This website uses cookies in order to measure how many people are accessing the website, as this helps us to ensure that there is enough capacity for everybody who wants to access the website, and also allows us to improve the website.

We use a third-party service called Google Analytics to help us do this, and the cookies used by this website are provided by Google Analytics. The cookies on this website are not used to identify you personally.

Google Analytics stores information about:

• the pages you visit on this website

• how long you spend on each page of this website


• how you got to the site 


• what you click on while you’re visiting the site.

We do not collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address), so the information listed above cannot be used to identify who you are.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

• _ga. This cookie is used to distinguish users. It expires in 2 years.
• _gid. This cookie is used to distinguish users. It expires in 24 hours.
• _dc_gtm. This cookie is used to manage all scripts on the website. It expires in 10 minutes.
• _gat. This cookie is used to throttle the request rate. It expires in 1 minute.
• _utma. Like _ga, this cookie is used to let us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to this website or to a certain page. It expires in 2 years.
• _utmb. This cookie works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on this website. It expires in 30 minutes.
• _utmc. This cookie works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser. It expires when you close your browser.
• _utmz. This cookie tells us how you reached this website (for example, from another website or a search engine). It expires in 6 months.

More information about cookies from Google Analytics is available on the Google Analytics website.

You can manage these small files yourself and learn more about them. Information and further help is available on ico.org.uk.