Use of cookies
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.You can manage these small files yourself through your browser setting.
Please note that the cookie providers listed below may distribute the gathered cookie information with other third party websites for the purpose of activity tracking. You can find out more about the policy of each cookie provider on their respective privacy pages.
Current cookies
Please by aware that the providers listed below may change their cookie names without notice.
As an example, we use the following cookies on our website:
| Cookie | Example name | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | _utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmz, GAPS, LSID, LSOSID, OTZ | These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site, which we use to help improve it. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. These cookies may also be identified as originating from england.nhs.uk. More information about Google cookies. |
| Google reCAPTCHA | _GRECAPTCHA | reCAPTCHA uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive challenges to keep malicious software from engaging in abusive activities on your website. Meanwhile, legitimate users will be able to login, make purchases, view pages, or create accounts and fake users will be blocked. More information about Google reCAPTCHA. |
| App Insights | ai_session, ai_user | These cookies are used to collect information about users interact use our site by automatically detect performance anomalies, and includes powerful analytics tools to help us diagnose issues and to understand how you are interacting with our site. These cookies help us to continuously improve performance and usability. |
How to 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.
Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.
If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You’ll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.
For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.
To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.