Last Modified: September 29, 2023.
About cookies
You may have heard of internet cookies – you may know all about them. To confirm, cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites you visit.
Cookies allow us to identify you (or, more accurately, your computer) when you visit our website. Knowing how often people are visiting each page of our website helps us work out how and where to improve our website.
By continuing to use our website, you consent to the use of cookies (including third-party cookies) as described in this policy.
Types of cookie
Categories
Necessary cookies help make our website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Performance cookies help us understand how visitors interact with our websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display content and ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable.
Persistent cookies and session cookies
Persistent cookies remain on a visitor’s device for a set amount of time. This means for example that we can identify when a site visitor is a repeat visitor or new to us.
Session cookies are created temporarily and last for as long as your browser window is open, being automatically deleted after you close your browser. These allow us to link the actions of a user during a visit to the website, to provide a consistent experience.
The cookies we use
Details about the cookies we use are set out in the table below. Some of these are third party cookies – see the section on third party cookies below for more information.
| Cookie | Purpose | Duration |
| PHPSESSID | The PHPSESSID cookie is native to PHP and enables websites to store serialised state data. On the Action website it is used to establish a user session and to pass state data via a temporary cookie, which is commonly referred to as a session cookie. As the PHPSESSID cookie has no timed expiry, it disappears when the session is closed. | Session |
| DYNSRV | This cookie is added by our load balancer to track which web server to send the visitor to. Its purpose is to improve the performance of the website. | Session |
| has_js | This cookie records whether your browser has JavaScript enabled. | Session |
| _ga | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 2 years |
| _gat | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It is used to throttle request rates. | 1 minute |
| _gat_UA-1360665-8 | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 10 minutes |
| _gid | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 1 day |
| _utmz | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It identifies the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached our website. | 6 months |
| _utmt | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 10 minutes |
| _utmc | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps to identify unique sessions. | Session |
| _utmb | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It helps to identify unique sessions. | 30 minutes after inactivity |
| _utma | This is a Google Analytics cookie. It identifies unique visitors to our website. | 2 years after each update |
| vuid | Our website uses Vimeo to embed videos from our Vimeo channel as well as other channels. You can find Vimeo’s privacy policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy. | 2 years |
| __cfduid, optimizelyEndUserId | These cookies are used to by Cloudflare to support performance optimisation. They do not store any personally identifiable information. | You can find Cloudflare’s privacy policy at https://www.cloudflare.com/security-policy |
| cookie_notice | This cookie is used to remember your preference for accepting the use of cookies. | |
| 1P_JAR, SID, SAPISID, APISID, SSID, HSID, NID | Google sets a number of cookies on any page that includes a Google Map. They include a mixture of pieces of information to measure the number and behaviour of Google Maps users. | Mixture of session cookies and other cookies expiring after 2 years. |
| pl, fr, datr, xs, dpr, c_user, sb, wd, act, presence | These cookies are used by Facebook to support social sharing and the integration of Facebook services. | These cookies include session cookies and cookies lasting for up to 2 years. See Facebook’s privacy policy for more information. |
| __unam, __sharethis_cookie_test__ | The “__unam” cookie is set as part of the ShareThis service and monitors “click-stream” activity, e.g. web pages viewed, navigation from page to page, time spent on each page etc. The ShareThis service only personally identifies you if you have separately signed up with ShareThis for a ShareThis account and given them your consent. See the ShareThis privacy policy for more information. | 15 months |
| _eventqueue | This cookie stores an array of mouse events that can’t be guaranteed to be logged to our servers before the current page is unloaded. These events can then be processed and logged on the subsequent page. | 10 minutes |
| heatmaps_g2g_xxxxxxxxx | This cookie tells our tracking code to log data about where a visitor is clicking on a site to send back to our servers and later used to generate a heatmap report of clicks on that page. | 1 hour |
| _first_pageview | This cookie is set on the first page view of a session. It is used to make our tracking code more efficient, so certain processes are only run on a visitor’s initial page view. | 10 minutes |
| catAccCookies | This cookie is used to remember your preference for accepting the use of cookies. | 2 years |
| _jsuid | Clicky sets the “_jsuid” cookie, which allows Clicky to create a traffic report. | 20 years |
| _pk_id.1.f89c | This is a Matomo cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 28 days |
| _pk_ses.1.f89c | This is a Matomo cookie. It helps us monitor the use and performance of our website. | 30 minutes |
Third party cookies
First party cookies are the cookies that are set by this website; third party cookies are set by other websites.
This website uses cookies provided by other organisations to support functions such as statistical performance analysis, rich media functionality and social sharing. These are third party cookies. You can read privacy policies from these third parties below:
- We use Vimeo to embed videos and provide some video elements in websites. You can find Vimeo’s privacy policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy.
- We use Google Analytics for statistical performance analysis. This information is aggregated and therefore anonymous. A full list of the information that we can track using Google Analytics on the website is outlined at these links:
[GA4] Predefined user dimensions – Analytics Help (google.com)
[GA4] Automatically collected events – Analytics Help (google.com)
To learn more about how Google Analytics collects and processes data, see: Google’s Privacy & Terms at https://policies.google.com/privacy.
You can opt out of Google Analytics by using the Google Analytics opt out browser add on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- We use Cloudflare for content delivery and internet security. You can find Cloudflare’s privacy policy at https://www.cloudflare.com/security-policy.
- We use Facebook for social sharing. You can find Facebook’s privacy policy at https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.
- We use ShareThis for social sharing. You can find the ShareThis privacy policy at http://www.sharethis.com/privacy/.
- We use Clicky for statistical performance analysis. This information is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Clicky’s privacy policy is at https://clicky.com/terms.
- We use Matomo (Piwik) for statistical performance analysis. This information is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Matomo’s privacy policy is at https://matomo.org/privacy/.
Control your cookie settings
If you want, you can block cookies by changing the settings on your browser – we have set out below links to the ‘Help’ pages of some major browsers which explain how you can do this. Blocking the cookies we use may have an adverse impact upon the presentation of some or all of our website.
General guidance on how to manage your cookies can be found here:
Specific guidance on how to manage cookie options for common website browsers can be found here: