What are cookies?  

To make this site simpler, we sometimes place small data files on your computer. These are known as cookies. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

 

What cookies do we use?

We use the following cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. These essential cookies are always enabled because our website won’t work properly without them. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services. You can switch off these cookies in your browser settings but you may then not be able to access all or parts of our website.
• Analytical or performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
• Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
• Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

 

Cookie Title	Cookie Name	Purpose
Strictly necessary cookies	.AspNetCore.Cookies & .AspNet.Cookies	Stores the user’s authentication ticket after successful login.   This is an encrypted cookie used to maintain the local session.
	x-ms-gateway-slice, x-ms-cpim-*, MSPAuth, MSPProf, MSCC, ESTSAUTH	These cookies allow session management and tracking during login.microsoftonline.com interactions. To allow users to access third party apps and forms.
	_RequestVerificationToken	Used to protect against CSRF attacks. Not directly related to authentication, but often present.
Analytic/Marketing cookies (not strictly necessary)	_ga	Used to distinguish users by assigning a unique client ID. Essential for tracking user behavior across sessions.
	_ga_PQGLZK9BJQ	A property-specific cookie for enhanced measurement with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Tracks user interactions for that specific property.
	_ga_VC3G0SSZ02	A GA4 property-specific cookie, similar to the one above, used to analyze engagement data.
	_gat_UA-40698553-3	Used to throttle request rates to Google Analytics. Helps limit the number of tracking hits sent.
	_gcl_au	Google AdSense cookie used for experiment tracking and conversion linking across domains (for ad tracking).
	_gid	Used to distinguish users for 24 hours. Helps Google Analytics track how users interact with a website during a single session.

 

We do not share the information collected by the cookies with any third parties.

 

Opting out of cookies

If you would prefer not to accept cookies, you can change the settings on your browser to block all or some of cookies, but this may lead to a loss in some functionality of the website. You can also clear your cookies cache is your browser settings or your history.

To opt out of targeted ads on Google, please see Google’s help article: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en-GB

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking in your browser, you can install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

 

More information

For more information, you can visit https://www.aboutcookies.org/ which provides information about how to control and delete cookies.