1.WHAT ARE ‘COOKIES‘?

Cookies are small data files that are downloaded to a user's computer, phone or tablet when you visit a website. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. They help website operators to, for example, recognise a user that has visited a website previously and to analyse behaviour in order to improve the user experience. Further details on the cookies used on our Website and their purposes are set out below.

2.WHAT COOKIES WILL BE USED AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

Performance cookies

In order to improve user experience on our Website, evaluate the performance of our content and fix technical issues or errors on pages or web forms we use performance and analytics tools, including from third parties, such as Google Analytics. These cookies collect information such as the number of user visits or returning visitors to a website. These cookies cannot however be used to identify a user and are used to generate aggregate data.

Targeting or Marketing cookies

As part of our marketing initiatives these cookies collect information about your browsing habits (e.g. which source a particular visit is coming from) and inferred interests in order to make advertising more relevant to you. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advert, as well as to measure the effectiveness and performance of an advertising campaign. Some of these cookies are placed by our third-party advertising networks. They remember the other websites that you visit and this information is shared with third-party organisations, for example advertisers.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to browse our Website and use its features. The information collected by these cookies relate to the operation of our Website, for example to authenticate you securely onto our Website and to verify that you are still connected to our Website in order to keep your session stable until you sign out.

Functionality cookies

These cookies enable our Website to remember choices you make and your personal preferences such as log in details in order to improve the user experience, for example by avoiding you having to re-enter these details on each visit to our Website.

3.HOW LONG WILL THE COOKIES REMAIN?

The single session cookie is a temporary cookie which remains in the cookie file of your browser until you close the browser. The other cookies will remain in the cookie file of your browser after the closing of the browser, and will become active again when you reopen the Website. These cookies have different expiration dates. Following expiry of a cookie, a new version of that cookie will be downloaded when you next visit the Website, unless you have withdrawn your consent in the meantime.

4.THIRD PARTY COOKIES

Some cookies are provided on our behalf by trusted third party service providers to aid with user experience, reporting of user behaviour, market research, providing advertisements according to user's interests and improving the Website functionality for example. This user behaviour is analysed in order to provide an improved user experience.

5.HOW DO I TURN COOKIES OFF?

You do not have to accept cookies, but if you opt to turn off or delete cookies generated via our Website, it may not perform as it has been designed to, possibly reducing the functionality on our Website, the options available to you, as well as the performance of our Website during your visit. All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings will typically be found in the 'options' or 'preferences' menu of your browser.

6.USEFUL LINKS

If you would like to find out more information about the usage of cookies on the Internet, please see the following links: www.allaboutcookies.org or www.youronlinechoices.eu which gives information about privacy issues around internet advertising.