This Cookies Policy sets out how North Highfield uses cookies and similar technologies when you access the North Highfield website or one of the locally branded websites.
North Highfield may change its policy from time to time as required and keep it up-to-date by amending this document. You should check this document periodically to ensure that you are aware of any recent changes.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small text file received and stored by your browser. Information in the cookie makes it possible for a website to recognise a visit by a specific browser installation and thus to send individualised information to this installation. A cookie can contain text, numbers, dates etc. but cookies used by us do not hold any personal information. A cookie is not a program and it cannot contain a virus.
What is meant by similar technologies?
‘Similar technologies’ refers to any mechanism in which information is stored or accessed on your device when you visit our websites, such as HTML5 Web Storage. Like cookies, these can contain simple data such as text, numbers, dates etc. but also cannot contain viruses. For simplicity’s sake, these will henceforth be included under the umbrella term of ‘cookies’ despite being a distinct technology.
Cookies used on this website
We make a distinction between cookies sent by our website, (first party cookies) and those sent by the website of one of our partners, e.g. Google Analytics (third party cookies). In most browsers it is possible to define settings that independently control the acceptance of each type of cookie on the computer.
We use cookies for the following purposes:
- Necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our site, or complete online payments securely.
- Analytics and Performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our site works, for example, by ensuring that users find what they are looking for easily.
- Targeting and Advertising cookies. These cookies record your visit to our site, the pages you have visited on our site and others, and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make the advertising displayed to you more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
We may share the information we collect from cookies with our third party advertisers and analytics teams i.e. Google, Facebook and Bing, where it may be combined with other information you’ve given to our website, or any of our booking partners.
What is the lifetime of a cookie?
A cookie’s lifetime varies depending on the purpose for which it has been created. Some cookies disappear as soon as the browser is shut down (temporary or session cookies) while others can live on for several months (permanent cookies). You can view the lifetimes of the cookies we set in the tables below.
Permanent cookies with a specified lifetime will have a new expiration date set each time the site to which the cookie is related is revisited.
HTML5 Web Storage objects can be split into two lifetimes, ‘Session’ or ‘Local’. Objects in the session storage will be removed by the web browser when a user closes the tab or window that the object was created in. Objects in the local storage are persistent and not automatically removed by browsers as default. These objects however can be removed by website functions.
How do I avoid cookies?
If cookies are operative on our website you will be able to adjust your Cookies Settings at any time when using our website by opening the Cookie Control widget found in the footer of the home page.
Alternatively, you can select a browser and set it to block some or all cookies, delete existing cookies from your computer’s hard disk drive or in some cases issue a warning before any new cookie is downloaded. Please consult your chosen web browser’s Help function for instructions on how to do this.
You can always force immediate deletion of the cookies on your computer either during, or at the end of, a browser session. Please consult your chosen web browser’s Help function for instructions on how to do this.
For further detailed information you may wish to visit https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/ which contains comprehensive sources of information on cookies and how to control them using a wide variety of browsers.