Introduction
By accessing and using our website or other services, you are agreeing to the terms of this policy. Please do read this cookie policy carefully so you know what we are doing with your information.
We may update this cookie policy from time to time and will post any changes here so it’s a good idea to come back occasionally and read through it again. This cookie policy was last updated on 02/09/2021
What are cookies?
Cookies are small files of letters and numbers. These files are either stored in the memory of your computer or other device such as mobile phones or tablet devices (these cookies are generally known as session cookies) or are placed on the hard drive of your device (generally known as persistent cookies).
Cookies are created when you visit a website or other service that uses cookies. Cookies are commonly used to help the user’s browsing experience and provide more information about the user’s experience and interests. This information is generally used to make content, services and advertising more relevant and useful during future visits.
For more details about cookies and details of how to delete and disable cookies you can visit www.aboutcookies.org and also see our section on more information and turning cookies off below.
How do we use cookies?
Our website and services use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our services and to provide increased functionality when you are using our services. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website and our services.
Unless you have adjusted your browser settings (where possible) to refuse cookies, our systems will issue cookies as soon as you visit our website or access other services. If you have switched off cookies then some of the functionality of our services may not be available to you.
The cookies that we use on our websites only collect anonymous information to optimise our services, and do not collect personal information.
What cookies are on our website?
Strictly Necessary Cookies
| Cookie Name | Description | Duration |
| CRAFT_CSRF_TOKEN | This cookie is used by Cloudflare to identify trusted web traffic. | Session Cookie |
| CRAFT_CSRF_TOKEN | This cookie is used by Cloudflare to identify trusted web traffic. | Session Cookie |
| _ok | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software, which provides functionality for websites to engage in instant messaging communication with visitors. Contains a site identifier, used for security purposes. | Session Cookie |
| olfsk | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software. Maintains message history across pages | 730 Days |
| _oklv | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software, which provides functionality for websites to engage in instant messaging communication with visitors. Used to improve caching of software. | Session Cookie |
| CraftSessionId | This cookie name is associated with the Craft web content management system, where is functions as an anonymous session identifier. | Session Cookie |
Performance Cookies
| Cookie Name | Description | Duration |
| _uetvid | This is a cookie utilised by Microsoft Bing Ads and is a tracking cookie. It allows us to engage with a user that has previously visited our website. | 2914024 Days |
| _ga | This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners._ga | 730 Days |
| _gat_UA-nnnnnnn-nn | This is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element on the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. It appears to be a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites. | Session Cookie |
| _gaexp | Used to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in. _ga | 79 Days |
| _gid | This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics. This appears to be a new cookie and as of Spring 2017 no information is available from Google. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited._gid | 1 Day |
| _uetvid | This is a cookie utilised by Microsoft Bing Ads and is a tracking cookie. It allows us to engage with a user that has previously visited our website. | 390 Days |
Functional Cookies
| Cookie Name | Description | Duration |
| hblid | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software. Identifies a unique visitor between visits | 730 Days |
| _okbk | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software, which provides functionality for websites to engage in instant messaging communication with visitors. Contains sofware state information. | Session Cookie |
| vuid | This domain is owned by Vimeo. The main business activity is: Video Hosting/Sharing | 730 Days |
Targeting Cookies
| Cookie Name | Description | Duration |
| _uetsid | This cookie is used by Bing to determine what ads should be shown that may be relevant to the end user perusing the site. | 1 Day |
| _uetsid | This cookie is used by Bing to determine what ads should be shown that may be relevant to the end user perusing the site. | 2914024 Days |
| _fbp | Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers | 90 Days |
| AnalyticsSyncHistory | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 30 Days |
| bscookie | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 731 Days |
| MUID | This domain is owned by Mircosoft - it is the site for the search engine Bing. | 390 Days |
| bcookie | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 731 Days |
| li_gc | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 724 Days |
| lidc | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 1 Day |
| UserMatchHistory | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | 30 Days |
| lang | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. It typically acts as a third party host where website owners have placed one of its content sharing buttons in their pages, although its content and services can be embedded in other ways. Although such buttons add functionality to the website they are on, cookies are set regardless of whether or not the visitor has an active Linkedin profile, or agreed to their terms and conditions. For this reason it is classified as a primarily tracking/targeting domain. | Session Cookie |
| lang | This domain is owned by LinkedIn, the business networking platform. This sub-domain is connected with LinkedIn's marketing services that enable website owners to gain insight into types of users on their site based on LinkedIn profile data, to improve targetng. | Session Cookie |
| N/A | This domain is owned by Facebook, which is the world's largest social networking service. As a third party host provider, it mostly collects data on the interests of users via widgets such as the 'Like' button found on many websites. This is used to serve targeted advertising to its users when logged into its services. In 2014 it also started serving up behaviourally targeted advertising on other websites, similar to most dedicated online marketing companies. | Session Cookie |
Other Cookies
| Cookie Name | Description | Duration |
| _okck | Olark cookie. Used to test whether the visitor’s browser allows cookies to be stored | Session Cookie |
| _okcs | Olark Cookie | Session Cookie |
| _okdetect | Olark Chat Cookie - Used for detecting when storage contexts have changed due to things like ssl or host transitions (helps maintain your chat across pages) | Session Cookie |
| wcsid | Olark Cookie - A session identifier that we use only on your site to keep track of a single chat session | Session Cookie |
| hblid | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software. Identifies a unique visitor between visits | 730 Days |
| _okgid | This cookie name is associated with the Olark Live Chat software product. It contains a group id for a site visitor. | Session Cookie |
| _okbk | Cookie set by Olark Live Chat software, which provides functionality for websites to engage in instant messaging communication with visitors. Contains sofware state information. | Session Cookie |
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. You can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:
Google Chrome
Microsoft Edge
Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Opera
Apple Safari
To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
The cookies on our website generally fall into the following category: Analytical cookies.
Analytical cookies
Analytical cookies allow us to recognise and to count the number of visitors to our website, to see how visitors move around the website when they are using it and to record which content viewers view and are interested in. This helps us to determine how frequently particular pages and advertisements are visited and to determine the most popular areas of our website and/or services. This helps us to improve the service which we offer to you by helping us make sure our users are finding the information they are looking for, and by tracking the success of advertising campaigns on our website.
What analytical cookies do we use?
Google Analytics
Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics tool provided by Google Ireland Limited (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies to help the website analyse how users use the website. The information generated by the cookies about your use of the website and your current IP-address will be transmitted by your browser to and will be stored by Google on servers in the United States and other countries. Google will use this information on our behalf to evaluate your use of the website, compile reports on website activity and provide us with other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The IP address collected through Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google.
| Cookie | Purpose | More information |
| _utma | Google Analytics – These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. | Google Analytics do not collect any personal information as seen in their privacy policy. Google also have a browser plugin that allows users to opt out of their analytics. |
| _utmb | ||
| _utmc | ||
| _utmz | ||
| WordPress session cookie | This cookie is used by us to identify user sessions between page loads. | This cookie is destroyed each time you close your browser |
| search_id | This cookie is used by us to record location search requests. | This cookie is destroyed each time you close your browser |
| selected_samples | This cookie is used to keep your selected samples selected until the request has been submitted. | This cookie is destroyed once you have submitted a sample request. |
You may reject or delete these cookies by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on available here
Where can I find more information about cookies, and how do I turn cookies off or delete cookies?
Find out more about cookies including how to disable/enable and delete them at the following website www.aboutcookies.org.
You can block most cookies (except for Flash cookies) by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our sites, or you may experience reduced functionality when accessing certain services. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon as you visit our website.