A cookie is a text file containing information which is downloaded to your desktop or laptop computer, tablet or mobile device when you visit our website. Cookies are useful because they allow our website to recognise your device. Cookies are then sent back to our website on each time you visit, enabling the website to “remember” you or your device. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites.

When we refer to cookies throughout this Policy, we intend to cover all similar devices including web beacons and log files. You can find more information about cookies at All About Cookies, Your Online Choices or About Cookies.

Part of creating an enjoyable and lasting experience for our customers is to use cookies to process information in order to better understand what you want from our site. For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on your device.

Examples of the types of information we collect via cookies are:

• How often you visit our website, the pages you visited on our website, your click-through on our website and the total time you spent on our website;
• The website you visited before our website;
• Whether you have visited our website before or if you are a new visitor;
  Your viewing preferences (e.g. layout, sizing preferences, language, etc.); and
• Your IP address, browser type and operating system, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. Also, to enable us to recognise you when you return to our website;

Please note: we do not collect your name or email address via cookies.

Cookies help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us to:

• To estimate our audience size and usage pattern
• To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests
• To speed up your searches
• Customise your visit: we may use information from your visit to help improve your next visit to our site; and
• Look at customer trends: we compile information from thousands of customer visits and analyse it as a whole. This kind of study focuses on identifying trends among the many visitors to our site rather than analysing information about any individual customer.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you visit our website.

When you use our website, the following categories of cookies may be set on your device:

First-party cookies

These cookies are set by Punter Southall Group and can be:

• Strictly necessary cookies – These cookies enable you to move about the site or to receive certain requested features, such as storing language preferences or allowing you to place orders on the website; or
• Functionality – These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features.

Third-party cookies

In addition to our use of these applications, certain third parties may set and access cookies on your computer, and in conjunction with web beacons:

• Analytics cookies – These cookies collect statistical (aggregated and anonymous) information about the use of our website by you and other visitors. This information allows the third party to enhance the functionality our website.

The length of time cookies are stored on your device can vary, but they generally fall into two categories: temporary session or persistent cookies.

Temporary session cookies

We use temporary session cookies on all of our secure pages to assign and store a session ID to you so that you can move uninterrupted between the areas of our site. This session ID is also used for internal reporting purposes. It is not personally identifiable to you, and this type of cookie does not leave any retrievable information on your hard drive. Most of our first-party cookies are session cookies which expire when you close your internet browser.

Persistent cookies

Our first-party analytics cookies and third-party cookies are persistent cookies because they are used to help us understand visitor patterns over a longer term or to provide additional functions you have requested in relation to site customisation and saved or stored content. They can be stored on your computer for 24 hours, a week, or several years, depending on the function they're helping to perform.

We use the cookies detailed below:

We have integrated components of LinkedIn and Twitter on this website. Each individual page that you visit, where the social media plug-in is integrated, your information will be collected by, transmitted to and stored by the provider of that social media plug-in.

The information collected and transmitted includes your IP address, the address of the website the social media plug-in is located, your browser information and operating system used, data and time the website was accessed or activated.

We will only set cookies on your device if you have provided consent. If you are concerned about having cookies on your device, you can use your browser settings to:

• delete all cookies;
• block all cookies;
• allow all cookies;
• block third-party cookies;
• clear all cookies when you close the browser;
• open a 'private browsing' / 'incognito' session, which allows you to browse the internet without storing local data;
• notify you each time new cookies are placed on your device; and
• install add-ons and plug-ins to extend browser functionality.

You can find out more information about controlling cookies from:

• Internet Explorer
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Opera

In addition, if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer 11 there is an option to turn on the Do Not Track functionality, which allows you to tell websites not to track you. Google has also published a browser add-on to allow you to choose what information about your websites you visit is sent to Google Analytics, this can be downloaded here. Full details on the cookies set by Google Analytics are published on the Google website.

Please note: if you choose to disable some or all cookies, you may not be able to make full use of our website and some useful features will not work.