What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we may store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or device. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of the Site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse the Site and also allows us to improve the Site.
Cookies are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task;
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested; and
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast
Types of cookies used
The Site uses the following categories of cookies:
- General cookies – this allows the Site to link the actions of a user during a browser session so that the Site is able to store certain information whilst the user is browsing the Site.
- Google Analytics cookies – Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the Site and volumes of usage.
You can find more detailed information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the tables below:
General cookies
| Name | Typical content | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| CookieInfoScript | 1 | A Boolean value used to remember if the user has dismissed the privacy information banner | No expiry |
| scvo_account | Randomly generated number | Used to allow users to sign in | 1 month |
Google Analytics cookies
The information from the following cookies will be used by Google in accordance with Google’s privacy policy. For more information on the cookies set by Google Analytics please refer to the Google Analytics website:
| Name | Typical content | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| _ga | Randomly generated number | Used to distinguish users. | 2 years |
| _gid | Randomly generated number | Used to distinguish users. | 24 hours |
| _gac_<property-id> | Randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search) | Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more. | 90 days |
| _gat | Randomly generated number | Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>. | 1 minute |