COOKIE POLICY

Our cookies are here to help

Cookies are little files that all websites put on our hard drives to help make our visits quicker, easier and more relevant to us. Some cookies are essential for websites to work and others remember things about you to give you a better and more enjoyable experience online. Read a bit more about the different types of cookies and what they do for you below.

Essential cookies

Without these cookies, our website won’t work properly. They help you move around the secure areas of the website and do things you’ve specifically come to the website for, like shopping or eBilling.

What they do:

Remember things like products you put in your basket and information you enter in forms. Without these cookies, this information would be lost every time you go to a new page. If you’re signed in to a secure are on our site these cookies recognise that you have already signed in. Without them, you’d need to sign in each time you go to a new page.

Cookies for website info

These cookies collect anonymous information about how visitors use our website, like the most popular pages and any error pages you see. We use this aggregated information to improve our website – it never identifies individual users.

What they do:

Give us an overall picture of how people use our website by telling us things like the number of visitors to each page and what people do on the page, like which links they click on.

Cookies that save your settings

When you fill in a form with your name or other details, these cookies remember that, so you don’t have to type it in each time you come back. They also remember changes to text size and font and other things you can customise.

What they do:

Remember any settings you’ve applied, such as layout, text size, preferences and colours
Remember if we’ve already asked you if you want to fill in a survey so that we don’t keep asking you
Allow us to offer you live chat sessions to offer you help or support
They show you when you’re logged in to the website
They can be used to share information with any partners who provide a service on our website. The information shared is only used to provide the service, product or function and not for any other purpose

Cookies for targeting

When you visit the website, these cookies recognise which parts of the website are interesting to you and to show you the pages and adverts we think you’ll like. You can control if these cookies are used but preventing them may stop us from offering you some services. Some of these cookies are managed by third parties, and you may alternatively use the third parties’ own tools to prevent these cookies.

What they do:

Allow us to deliver content and marketing communications tailored to your interests based on information from your visit.

Cookies for adverts

These cookies are used to show you adverts relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advert, as well as help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. They are usually placed by advertising networks, with our permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers.

What they do:

These cookies collect information about your browsing habits to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.

Cookie Policy 2

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, smartphone or other device when you access the internet.

Why are cookies essential to websites?

This website, along with many others, uses cookies. Cookies let users navigate around sites and (where appropriate) let us tailor the content to fit the needs of our site’s visitors. Without cookies enabled we can’t guarantee that the website and your experience of it are as we intended it to be.

None of the cookies we use collect your personal information and they can’t be used to identify you.

Types of cookies

The length of time a cookie stays on your device depends on its type. We use two types of cookies on our websites.

Session cookies are temporary cookies which only exist during the time you use the website (or more strictly, until you close the browser after using the website). Session cookies help our websites remember what you chose on the previous page, avoiding the need to re-enter information.

Persistent cookies stay on your device after you’ve visited our website. Persistent cookies help us identify you as a unique visitor but don’t contain information that could be used to identify you to another person.

How to control and delete cookies

If you want to restrict or block the cookies we set, you can do this through your browser settings. The help function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you could visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on cookies on a wide variety of browsers. You’ll also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer. To learn about controlling cookies on the browser of your mobile device please refer to your handset manual.

Cookies in emails

As well as the cookies we use on our websites, we use cookies and similar technologies in some emails. These help us to understand whether you’ve opened an email and how you’ve interacted with it. If you have enabled images, cookies may be set on your computer or device. Cookies will also be set if you click on any link within the email. The types of cookies we use are:

Web beacons: tiny, invisible images placed in emails to tell us whether you’ve opened them (and if so how often), how you interacted with them (for example the time you spent reading the email), which email software and web browser you used, which device you used and your IP address. We also use web beacons to help us display emails in the best format for your device.

Link tracking: our emails contain a number of hyperlinks, each of which has a unique tag. When you click on one of these links the mailing company logs the click so that we can understand who has clicked through from an email to our website. We use this information to tailor future messages to you.

Cookies: our process for delivering emails may cause cookies to be set when you download images or when you click on a link.

Making choices about cookies

If you don’t want to accept cookies from our emails, simply close the email before downloading any images or clicking on any links. You can also set your browser to restrict or reject cookies. These settings will apply to all cookies on websites and emails.

In some instances, depending on your email or browser settings, cookies in an email may be automatically accepted (for example, when you’ve added an email address to your address book or safe senders list). Please check your email browser or device instructions for more information on this.