When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
These pieces of information 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
- 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 analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better
You can manage these small files and learn more about them from the article, Internet Browser cookies- what they are and how to manage them http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/SiteInformation/DG_197506?CID=Central&PLA=url_mon&CRE=managing_cookies
Which cookies do we use?
The table below explains the cookies we use and why. Each cookie is listed by name, along with the following information:
How can I control and delete cookies?
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.
However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.
