What is a ‘cookie’?

When you enter a site, your computer will automatically be issued with a cookie.

Cookies are text files that identify your computer to our server. Cookies in themselves do not contain any personal identifying information about a visitor or their location. They just identify the computer used. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their site in order to track traffic flows and patterns of behaviour of site visitors.

You can see a schedule of the cookies we use below.

Cookie NameExpiration TimeDescription
_ga2 yearsUsed to distinguish users
_gid24 hoursUsed to distinguish users
_gat1 minuteUsed to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>