Cookies are text files sent to your computer and used by your web browser to store information. The cookies we use allow your browser to remember whether you’ve visited our site before and what your preferences are.

As with most websites we use cookies to improve your user experience by enabling our website to ‘remember you’, either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’). There are also two different types of cookies – first party (which we own) and third party (where we allow a third party, such as Google, to set cookies on your computer or mobile device).

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – for example, when you enter your login details and move to another page it won’t recognise you and it won’t be able to keep you logged in.

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimise this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymised user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.

For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

How to refuse or withdraw consent

Although the cookies we use on this website are quite harmless and do not reveal your identity, not everyone wishes to have text files downloaded onto their computer or mobile device. If you prefer, it is possible to block some or all cookies, or even to delete cookies that have already been set; but you need to be aware that you might lose some functionality on this website.

You can manage how cookies engage with your computer or mobile device via your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Android), so you are alerted when cookies are sent or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies which have already been set.

There is also a very useful website explaining how to control your interaction with cookies – please visit this site for more information:

https://www.aboutcookies.org/

The BBC website also has a clear and comprehensive section explaining what they do and how they work. Please be aware that this section is aimed at users of their website, which employs more cookies than our own.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/cookies/