Cookies

How we use cookies

To help improve this site we place small files, known as cookies, onto your computer. Some are essential for the site to work properly, others are to improve the experience you have.

You can also decide to stop this or any site from using any cookies. To learn more about cookies and how to manage them visit KnowCookies.com.

Essential cookies

Website operation

The system that runs our website sets cookies to allow it to run smoothly.

Name Purpose Expires
__cf_bm Identifies and mitigates bots to protect website from malicious automated traffic 30 minutes
cf_clearance Remembers user verification to bypass future Cloudflare security challenges during session 30 minutes
CookieControl This cookie is set by Civic Cookie Control to remember your cookie preferences 3 months

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use our site, and rough demographics as to what groups of people are using our site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting your needs and to understand how we could improve it. You can opt-out of Google Analytics tracking.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • The pages you visit
  • How long you spend on each page
  • How you got to the site
  • What you click on while you’re here
  • Your broad demographic profile (age range, gender, interests)

Google Analytics does not have access to the personal information you provide us (e.g. your name) so it doesn’t know who you are.

The following cookies are set by Google Analytics:

Name Purpose Expires
_ga This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before 2 years
__utma Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to the site or to a certain page 2 years
__utmb This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on the site 1 hour
__utmc This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser when you close your browser
__utmz This tells us how you reached the site (like from another website or a search engine) 6 months
__utmt This is used by Google Analytics to ensure its work doesn’t have a big impact on the site’s performance by throttling request rates 10 minutes
_gid This is used by Google Analytics to store information on how visitors use the website to create an analytics report. 1 day
_gat This is used by Google Universal Analytics to limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. 1 minute
_ga*_ This is used by Google Analytics to to store and count page views. 2 years

Last updated: 31 October 2025.