Use of Cookies on this Website

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small package of data that is sent to the browser on your computer or mobile device from a web server. This package of data is then stored on your device.

Each website can send its own cookies to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other websites. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

On this website, cookies are used to record information about your online preferences and login status. Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised features cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly they may not be able to take full advantage of all of the website's features.

Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences. During the course of any visit to this website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. This allows the system to track the fact that you are logged in. This may be done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

How do we use cookies on this site?

This site uses a cookie to prevent cross-site request forgeries, called csrftoken. This cookie is used to ensure that requests made to the site (for example the submission of a form) is a genuine request built using a form on this site, rather than a bogus attempt to submit data from outside the system.

You may also find cookies called __utma, __utmz, __utmb and __utmc. These four cookies are created and used by Google Analytics, to allow the collection of site usage statistics. The information collected using Google Analytics is general in nature - we are not looking at individual users, but looking at trends in usage across time (e.g. the number and geographical distribution of users.)