Cookie Policy

THIS POLICY OUTLINES WHAT COOKIES AND SIMILAR TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES OUR WEBSITES USE, HOW WE USE THEM AND INFORMATION ON HOW TO OPT OUT OF THESE COOKIES IF YOU WISH TO DO SO.

What are cookies?

Cookies and similar tracking technologies, such as tags, scripts and beacons, are small pieces of code (referred to as cookies hereafter) that are stored on a device (computer, mobile phone, tablet etc) and enable a website to “personalise” itself to users by remembering information about the user’s visit to the website. We also use cookies within emails we may send.

Cookies are used to collect information, where available, about your device, your IP address, operating system and browser type and how you have interacted with our websites.

While cookies are used to identify users and devices, they only ever collect non-personal information such as IP addresses, device IDs. If the data cookies collect are ever merged with any other information with which you have provided us, such as email addresses, these are anonymised in such a way that identification to actual people is impossible.

Why do we use them?

Our websites use cookies to:

  • Store any preferences you have made and display content to you in a more personalised way
  • Evaluate our websites’ advertising and promotional effectiveness
  • Gain insight into the nature of our audience so we can tailor our content accordingly
  • Provide interest-based advertising on our websites and on other websites which are tailored to your interests and preferences

We have a legitimate interest to use cookies so that we can show you adverts we believe you might be interested in, to control the number of times you see an advert and to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. We advertise on our site and in our newsletters to help keep the content free for our audiences.

We will always make sure our websites contain clear and easy to find information about our cookies.

What types of cookies do we use?
  • Per-session cookies – We only use these while you are visiting our website and they are deleted when you leave. They remember you as you move between pages, for example recording the items you add to an online shopping basket. They also help maintain security.
  • Persistent cookies – These cookies stay on your computer until they expire or are deleted. We set automatic deletion dates so that we don’t keep your information for longer than we need to.
  • First and third-party cookies – Whether a cookie is ‘first’ or ‘third’ party refers to the website or domain placing the cookie. First party cookies in basic terms are cookies set by a website visited by the user – the website displayed in the URL window. Third party cookies are cookies that are set by a domain other than the one being visited by the user. If a user visits a website and a separate company sets a cookie through that website this would be a third-party cookie.
Below is a full list of all the different third-party cookies that we use:
Cookie Description
_atuvc This cookie is associated with the AddThis social sharing widget which is commonly embedded in websites to enable visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. It stores an updated page share count.
_atuvs This cookie is associated with the AddThis social sharing widget which is commonly embedded in websites to enable visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. This is believed to be a new cookie from AddThis which is not yet documented but has been categorised on the assumption it serves a similar purpose to other cookies set by the service.
_stripe_mid This cookie is associated with Stripe, a payment processing service that process payments for orders via the website.
_stripe_sid This cookie is associated with Stripe, a payment processing service that process payments for orders via the website.
_cart_count This cookie is used by the site to keep track of the number of items in the shopping cart.
_country_code This cookie is used by the site to determine which regional pages to display.
_fbp This cookie is associated with Facebook. It is used to store and track visits across websites.
_ga This cookie 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.
_gat This cookie is associated with Google Universal Analytics. According to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate – limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.
_gid This cookie 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.
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress This cookie is associated with web analytics functionality and services from Hotjar.
_hjFirstSeen This cookie is associated with web analytics functionality and services from Hotjar.
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample This cookie is associated with web analytics functionality and services from Hotjar. It uniquely identifies a visitor during a single browser session and indicates they are included in an audience sample.
_hjid This cookie is associated with web analytics functionality and services from Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
cookie_notice_accepted This cookie is by the site to remember that the cookie notice has been dismissed.
mailchimp_landing_site This cookie is used by Mailchimp to store which page was first visited.
wfwaf-authcookie-(hash) This cookie is used by the Wordfence firewall to perform a capability check of the current user before WordPress has been loaded. This is only set for users that are able to login to WordPress.
woocommerce_cart_hash This cookie is associated with WooCommerce. It helps WooCommerce determine when cart contents/data changes.
woocommerce_items_in_cart This cookie is associated with WooCommerce. It helps WooCommerce determine when cart contents/data changes.
wordpress_logged_in_(hash) This cookie is associated with WordPress. It will test whether or not the user has logged-in to WordPress. This is only set for users that are able to login to WordPress. 
wordpress_(hash) This cookie is associated with WordPress. A number of these cookies will exist to provide an appropriate user experience and to manage your login session. This is only set for users that are able to login to WordPress.
wordpress_test_cookie This cookie is associated with WordPress. It will test whether or not the browser has cookies enabled. This is only set for users that are able to login to WordPress.
wp-woocommerce_session_(hash) This cookie is associated with WooCommerce. It contains a unique code for each customer so that it knows where to find the cart data in the database for each customer.
comment_author_(hash) This cookie is associated with WordPress. Upon commenting, the site will offer to remember the visitor’s name for future reference. Opting-in will create this cookie.
comment_email_(hash) This cookie is associated with WordPress. Upon commenting, the site will offer to remember the visitor’s email address for future reference. Opting-in will create this cookie.
comment_url_(hash) This cookie is associated with WordPress. Upon commenting, the site will offer to remember the visitor’s website address for future reference. Opting-in will create this cookie.
wpe-auth This cookie is associated with WP Engine. It will test whether or not the user has logged-in to WordPress on a site hosted with WP Engine.
Opting out of cookies:

We provide you with choice over the use of cookies as described in this policy.

Please note that our website may not work correctly if you change certain preferences, such as disabling all cookies.

Please also note that after applying these settings, you will continue to receive advertising, although it may not be tailored to your likely interests using information collected from cookies and similar technologies on your device.

First Party Cookies 

If you’d rather we didn’t use cookies when you visit us, click here for information on how to configure your browser settings to reject cookies. Please note, disabling these types of cookies won’t turn off advertising on our websites and the advertising you see may be less relevant to you.

Third Party Cookies

If you would like to opt-out of third-party cookies, here are some options:

  • Google Analytics, which is a tool used to track and report website traffic, provides an out-out browser add-on that can be downloaded here.
    • Google Safety Centre has a tool where you can control the ads you see on Google and control the data used for serving ads to you. It can be found here.
  • If you wish to block other cookies you can use the browser-level cookie controls described below.
Browser-level cookie controls

Most browsers allow you to manage cookie settings. These settings can usually be found in the ‘Settings’, ‘Options’ or ‘Preferences’ menu of your browser. The links below are provided to help you find the settings for some common browsers.