Cookies

The Central Lancashire Local Plan Website – How We Use Cookies

Version 1. Updated 22^nd August 2018.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are sent from a webpage to your computer or mobile device when you visit certain websites.

They are used to collect information about how you interact with certain websites and can allow advertisers to track which sites you have visited, which pages you have visited and how long you spent on each page. Utility cookies (sometimes called ‘session cookies’) allow you to stay logged in as you move around a webpage.

How do cookies work?

The very first time you visit a website, a cookie is downloaded to your computer. The next time you visit your computer checks to see if it has a cookie for that site. If it does, it sends the information back to the website. The website then 'knows' that you have visited us before, and in some cases can tailor its content to take account of that fact and remember your preferences.

How does Central Lancashire use Cookies?

We use cookies to collect non-personal information about how visitors use our sites. We only collect information that helps us to provide and manage a useful and efficient web service. More specifically, we use cookies:

To keep the customers session active as they navigate around the website so that they don’t need to log in again (where applicable).
To count how many visitors visit our sites.
To analyse how visitors search for and find information, to improve navigation and usability.

How are cookies used?

Measuring website usage using Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how people use centrallocalplan.lancashire.gov.uk. This is to make sure our website continues to meet the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

The pages you visit on the site.
How long you spend on each page and the time you both enter and leave our website.
How you got to the site.  
What you click on while you’re visiting the site.
Remember your preferences.
Devices and operating systems used to view the site.
To collect your consent as required by EU law.

We don’t allow Google to share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Cookie	Purpose	Expires
_ga	This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you have visited us before.	2 years
_gid	This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you have visited us before.	1 day
_gat	Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made.	1 minute
_utma	Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to the site or to a certain page.	2 years
_utmb	This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on the site.	30 minutes
_utmc	This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser.	Session
_utmt	Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made.	10 minutes
_utmz	utmz This tells us how you reached the site (for example from another website or a search engine).	6 months
NID	This is used to remember your preferences.	6 months
CONSENT	This shows that the user has consented for cookies to be used as required by EU law.	2 years
1P_JAR	This is used to gather statistics and track conversations between websites.	2 days

Privacy Notification

The privacy notification provides users the ability to easily access the privacy notice and cookies policy that our website holds. In order to allow users to dismiss this notification we set a cookie. The next time the user visits our site the application attempts to find if the cookie is present. If it is, then the application knows not to show the notification.

MyAccount and centrallocalplan.lancashire.gov.uk set the following cookie:

Cookie	Purpose	Expires
localplannotficationclosed	Notifies us as to whether the user has previously dismissed the cookie notification.	18 months

How do I opt out of using cookies?

We recommend that you allow the cookies we set on our site. They help us provide a better service and ultimately make our website easier to use.

However, if you wish to opt out of cookies just go to the privacy settings in your browser options, and enter our domain (centrallocalplan.lancashire.gov.uk) in the list of websites you do not wish to accept cookies from.

For a simple guide to managing and opting out of cookies on all sites you visit, whatever browser you use, please see how to manage cookies.