Privacy & Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy tells you what will happen to any personal data that you provide to us as a result of using this website. The information is written for the benefit of general visitors to the website – if you are a client of ours (or become one) we process a wider range of personal data and deal with a broader range of privacy-related issues. Clients are provided detailed information about this during the engagement process.

Personal Data You Provide

Your privacy is important to us. By providing personal information such as your name and e-mail address via the forms on this website, you agree to us contacting you with regard to the information provided.

Some forms on our website also include a check box asking you for permission to add you to our mailing list. This is an opt-in mailing list and your personal information will be used solely by us (and all such emails include a link for opt-out).

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use the data you provide via this website to:

  • communicate with you, for example: we use contact details such as email address or phone number when responding to enquiries made via online forms
  • monitor website trends, for example: we use Google Analytics to help us aggregate traffic so we can monitor how the website is being used
  • operate our business more effectively, for example: we seek feedback and use this to help improve our service

Our “Lawful Reasons” For Processing Your Personal Data

The “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) is the primary piece of legislation defining your rights over our processing of your personal information. The GDPR requires us to declare which of six “lawful reasons” we are relying on when we are processing your personal data: we operate on the basis of “consent” when sending newsletters (you won’t get sent a newsletter unless you have explicitly opted in to receive one)…. and we operate on the basis of “legitimate interest” when communicating with you in other ways (e.g. when responding to your enquiry).

How Long We Keep Personal Data

Personal data may be stored by the website for a period of up to 90 days after which time it is removed automatically.

Transfer of Personal Data

From time to time we may pass personal data such as your name and email address to other services that we use to send out newsletters and other communications (both electronic and print). However, your personal data will remain in the EU or countries considered by the EU to have equivalent policies such as Jersey, Guersey, Switzerland, New Zealand and Cananda. Companies based in the USA that have certified with the EU-US Privacy Shield programme are also considered to be permitted destinations by the EU (this includes popular US products like Gmail, DropBox and MailChimp).

Questions or Complaints

In the first instance we hope you will contact us directly with any questions or complaints (contact details are displayed prominently on this website). However, legal rights regarding privacy are the remit of the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and you will find more information about how to complain here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Our Use of Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to monitor how our website is being used so we can make improvements. Our use of Google Analytics requires us to pass to Google your IP address (but no other information) – Google uses this information to prepare site usage reports for us, but Google may also share this information with other Google services. In particular, Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

 

Cookies Policy

This site uses cookies to help provide valuable visitor information for the ongoing support of the site. Please note, by reading this information and continuing to use our site is accepted as your consent to allow for the use of Cookies. If you would like to block Cookies then please see the section below.

The definition of cookies below is taken from an excerpt from Wikipedia (the full page can be accessed here).

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user’s previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or years ago.

Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer, tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals’ browsing histories.

Other kinds of cookies perform essential functions in the modern Web. Perhaps most importantly, authentication cookies are the most common method used by web servers to know whether the user is logged in or not, and which account they are logged in under. Without such a mechanism, the site would not know whether to send a page full of sensitive information, or a message saying “sorry, you need to log in”. The security of an authentication cookie generally depends on the security of the issuing website and the user’s web browser.

How we use Cookies on this site

We are using cookies supplied by Google Analytics to help provide information on visitors, page views, the number of people visiting our site and also the type of browser that is being used. This helps us create a better viewing experience for our users by allowing us to ensure that the right information and viewing elements are delivered correctly.

We may also incorporate Google AdSense too in order to help bring you relevant advert information. This is provided by a third-party provider (Google) and is done so to offer relevant and valid adverts.

For any e-commerce or payment mechanisms cookies are used to store item purchases for the session of your visit. A cookie may also be placed to store your username to help your shopping experience on your next visit.

Any off-site advertising will be supported through the use of cookies, these are in place to help deliver relevant adverts to your viewing experience.

Blocking Cookies

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. For example:

  1. In Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector;
  2. In Firefox you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, and un-checking “Accept cookies from sites” in the “Privacy” box.

Blocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. Alternatively, you can follow the guide for opting out of Google Analytics tracking code here.

Deleting Cookies

You can also delete cookies already stored on your computer:

  1. In Internet Explorer, you must manually delete cookie files.
  2. In Firefox, you can delete cookies by, first ensuring that cookies are to be deleted when you “clear private data” (this setting can be changed by clicking “Tools”, “Options” and “Settings” in the “Private Data” box) and then clicking “Clear private data” in the “Tools” menu.

Obviously, doing this may have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.