Cookies Policy

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that are stored on you browser or the hard drive of your device you use to access our website with your consent. Cookies help us to make our website work properly and provide information to us about the use of our website. They can allow us (or the third party that placed it on your device) to distinguish you from other website users.​

Why do we use cookies?

We use cookies to help us to provide you with a good experience when you browse and use our website,, including by remembering you as you navigate through our site in a single session or across multiple sessions. We use cookies to save your preferences, to keep track of advertisements and search engine results and to compile aggregated data about site traffic and site interactions to troubleshoot issues and improve our website.

​The cookies on our website can be grouped into the following categories:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our sites.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you and any choices you make when you return to our website.
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Some cookies are “session” cookies, which means they are erased when you close your browser, others are persistent for a given period of type or until you delete them. For more information see our table below.

Google Analytics

​Our site uses Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use our website. For privacy information from Google, including information about how Google may make use of cookies it places on your device and how to opt out of certain advertisements follow this link: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites?hl=en-GB&gl=uk. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all website by visiting http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

​Managing Your Preferences

You can make changes to your browser settings to refuse the setting of some or all cookies. Check instructions for your browser below. You should note that if you disable all cookies some areas of our website will not work properly.

  • Google Chrome
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Apple Safari
  • Opera

To find out what cookies have been set on your device you can visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below.

For more details as to how we handle your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Name Purpose and what we use it for Expiry
2 Universal Analytics (Google)_ga_gid_gat_gac_ These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. They allow us to distinguish users, throttle the request rate on our site, improve our site and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. _ga 2 years_gid 24 hours_gat 1 minute_gac_ 90 days
3 AMP_TOKEN Allows us to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID Service. Also used to indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Up to 1 year
4 svSession Allows us to identify visitors to our site, and track their sessions on our site. Persistent
5 hs Used to enhance the security of our site Session
6 XSRF-TOKEN Used to enhance the security of our site Session
7 smSession Allows us to identify the members logged in to our site. 2 weeks
8 TSxxxxxxxx and TSxxxxxxxx_d (where x is replaced with a random series of numbers and letters) Used to enhance the security of our site Session
9 RequestID Allows us to track visitor behaviour on our site and to measure the performance of our site. Session
10 Linked InlidcbcookiebscookieL1c lidc allows us to ensure that visitors are routed correctly.bcookie allows us to identify the browser being used by visitors.bscookie allows us to secure our browser ID cookie, bcookie.L1c allows us to identify the browser being used by visitors. lidc 1 dayThe others in this section 1 year
11 LinkedIn Ad Analytics:BizoIDBizoDataBizoUserMatchHistoryBizoNetworkPartnerIndex Linked In Ad Analytics. Allows us to report on and improve the effectiveness of advertising on Linked In 6 months
12 Token (Linked In) Access token 4 hours
13 Player_settings_0_3 (Linked In) Player settings 3 weeks
14 LyndaLoginStatus (Linked In) Login Status 10 years
15 throttle-XXX (Linked In) Throttling on Lynda 6 months
16 NSC_XXX (Linked In) Load balancing 5 minutes