Data Protection / Privacy Policy

Cookies

What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, smartphone or other device when you access the internet.

Why are cookies essential to our website?
This website, along with many others, uses cookies. Cookies let users navigate around sites and (where appropriate) let us tailor the content to fit the needs of our site's visitors. Without cookies enabled we can't guarantee that the website and your experience of it are as we intended it to be.

None of the cookies we use collect your personal information and they can’t be used to identify you.

Types of cookies.
The length of time a cookie stays on your device depends on its type. We use one type of cookie on our website.

Session cookies are temporary cookies which only exist during the time you use the website (or more strictly, until you close the browser after using the website). Session cookies are used to ensure that page content accessed after an authorised login are accessible only to the user who has logged in using an authenticated login and password.

PHPSESSID

The session id is sent to the user when his session is created. It is stored in a cookie (called, by default, PHPSESSID ) that cookie is sent by the browser to the server with each request. The server (PHP) uses that cookie, containing the session_id, to know which file corresponds to that user.

When you leave the website and close the browser, this session cookie should be removed by your browser.

We use session cookies in our online application pages. Without session cookies you won't be able to make an application for a grant.

Browser “Remember Password” Cookies

When browsing the internet, username and passwords are required to access private areas. Web browsers will prompt the user before saving these passwords. Once the password is saved, it will automatically appear and only a single click to login is required. Anyone with access to your login will have access to these secure websites.

When browsing the internet, a small amount of text containing some information, as defined by web sites that you visit, is saved. This is called a cookie. It is designed to aid in your browsing, but it can be benign and/or malicious. Clearing cookies is optional, but please be aware that this occurs.

How to control and delete browser cookies
If you want to restrict or block these cookies, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘help’ function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you could visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on cookies on a wide variety of browsers. You’ll also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer. To learn about controlling cookies on the browser of your mobile device please refer to your handset manual.

Third party hyperlinks

We have hyperlinks to other websites on our website. Whilst we use reasonable endeavours to ensure that the sites we link to are safe sites, we assume no responsibility for the content on such websites and it is your responsibility to check the privacy policies in these websites if you choose to click through to them.

Contact forms and email links

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on our Contact us page, none of the data that you supply will be stored by this website or passed to / be processed by any of the third party data processors. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to us over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Our own SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted using SHA-2, 256-bit cryptography before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by our local computers and devices. However, not all mail servers are secured in such a way. Therefore, we would suggest that you always consider email as an insecure medium and not include personal, confidential or otherwise sensitive information within an email.