Marlborough Area Development Trust

Cookie usage

Last Updated: 30th October 2015

This information applies to all Marlborough Area Development Trust web sites. Whilst providing our services we would like from time to time collect certain information about the visitors to our web sites and this may involve the use of what are called 'cookies'.

Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’), and we are no different in this respect.

Cookies are used in many different ways, for example by letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and making the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website did not use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – so for example, when you login to one of our web sites and move to another page we continue to recognise you and this avoids you having to login at every page.

Here is a summary of the type of information we may collect and how it is used:

HTTP cookies

Two types of cookies are used on the websites:

Session Cookies: which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the website. These allow you to carry information across pages of the websites and avoid having to re-enter information.

Persistent Cookies: which remain in the cookie file of your browser for longer (the exact time will depend on the lifetime of each specific cookie). Cookies can help a website to arrange content to match your preferred interests more quickly. Most major websites use cookies. Persistent Cookies help us recognise you as a unique visitor (just a number) when you return to a website and to allow us to tailor content and the presentation of each website to match your preferences. They also allow us to compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that help us to understand how users use the websites and to help us improve their structure. We cannot identify you personally in this way.

Site Usage Tracking:

We regularly monitor visitor trends for our web sites. Through the use of the Google Analytics service we are able to view visitor activity including number of visits, pages viewed, repeat visitors and referral information. We do not, nor are we able to view the actual identity of anyone who visits our web sites. Any detailed information that we do acquire is used only to gauge the performance and usefulness of each web site and to help us plan for their future development. In order to gain an overall market understanding for our products and services we may occasionally make available generic information, such as the total number of visitors and/or page views and the overall percentage of visitors originating from different areas, to third party analysts or developers. The Google Analytics systems use their own cookies - more detail of which is available here

Cookie acceptance

Unless you accept the use of cookies by ticking the checkbox in the description box that appears at the top of the screen and clicking the "Continue" button, this site will not assign any cookies, with one exception which is the use of what is called a PHP session cookie. This is an anonymous session cookie used for security purposes and cannot currently be avoided. You do however also have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser.

It should be noted however, that you may not be able to use all the interactive features of the website and if you are a registered user for one of our sites you will not be able to login if cookies are disabled in your browser or you do not accept their use by ticking the checkbox and clicking the "Continue" button.

More background information on cookies is available from these web sites:
Wikipedia link
Aboutcookies.org