Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to improve site performance and enhance your browsing experience. The use of cookies is standard across most websites. Without them, many features, such as making purchases or accessing secure areas, would not function properly.

We use cookies to understand how visitors interact with our website, so that we can improve our services, and analyse trends and performance. This policy explains what cookies are, which types we use, and how you can manage them.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They help the site recognise your device on future visits. Similar technologies, such as web beacons, operate in the same way; we refer to all these collectively as “cookies.”

Cookies serve a variety of purposes. They allow websites to function more efficiently, improve navigation, store preferences, and help website owners understand how visitors use their site. They can also personalise your experience by remembering your username, storing preferences such as language or region, or showing content and advertising relevant to your interests.

Some cookies may store personal information, such as your username if you choose “remember me” when logging in. Others collect anonymous data, such as how visitors arrive at and move through the website.

Cookies in use on our website

We use the following types of cookies:

Essential or strictly necessary cookies. Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. For example, some cookies enable you to log into secure areas of our website or make use of services. These types of cookies also allow us to identify subscribers and ensure they can access the subscription only pages. If a subscriber opts to disable these cookies, the user will not be able to access all the content that a subscription entitles them to.

Analytical or 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 by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.  We use Google Analytics performance cookies to provide anonymous statistics on how our site is used.  Some of our performance cookies are managed for us by third parties.  However, we don’t allow the third party to use the cookies for any purpose other than those listed above. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages. We might also use these cookies to highlight articles or services that we think will be of interest to you based on your usage of our website.

Functionality cookies.  We use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences for your return visits to our website. This also enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).

Social Media Cookies. These cookies allow you to share what you’ve been doing on the website on social media such as Facebook, TikTok and Twitter. These cookies are not within our control. Please refer to the respective privacy policies for how their cookies work.

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 anonymously. We do not tell third parties who you are.

Does anyone else use cookies on our website?

Some cookies on our site may be set by third-party services such as analytics providers, advertising networks, or social media platforms. We do not control these cookies. Please check the privacy or cookie policies of these providers for more information.

Can you block cookies?

In order to store cookies on your device, website owners must now have your consent.  Therefore, you agree to our use of cookies when confirming your agreement on our website’s home page.   You can withdraw your consent for us to use cookies at any time. In addition to you informing us you no longer wish for us to use cookies; you can disable them by changing the settings on your browser.

If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the help and support area on your internet browser for instructions on how to locate the file or directory that stores cookies.

However please bear in mind that failing to consent to our use of cookies, or deleting or disabling cookies may prevent you from accessing our website or result in a loss of functionality which degrades your experience of the website.