The National Centre for Accessible Transport (“ncat”) Website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best possible user experience.
Without some of these cookies, the website simply would not work. Other cookies perform functions like recognising you each time you visit the site or helping our team to understand which parts of the site you find most interesting and useful.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, smartphone or tablet by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work and to function more effectively. For example, they may be required to keep you logged in to a service, or to remember your user preferences or shopping cart contents. A cookie will typically contain a record of the web site which issued it, its own name, and a value which is often a randomly generated unique number. In most cases, cookies do not contain any personal data, however, they sometimes do and, when combined with other information about you, they may also constitute personal data.
A cookie will have a ‘lifetime’, which tells your browser when to delete it. Cookies can be set by the website domain itself, or by another domain, for example by Google Maps.
There are several different types of cookie. These are the most common ones:
Session cookie
A session cookie only lasts for the duration of the user’s website visit. A web browser normally deletes session cookies when it quits.
Persistent cookie
A persistent cookie will outlast user sessions. If a persistent cookie has its maximum age set to 1 year, then, within the year, the initial value set in that cookie would be sent back to the server every time the user visited the server. This could be used to record a piece of information such as how the user initially came to this website. For this reason persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies. Secure cookie A secure cookie is only used when a browser is visiting a server via HTTPS, ensuring that the cookie is always encrypted when transmitting from client to server. First-party cookie First-party cookies are cookies set with the same domain (or its subdomain) in the browser’s address bar.
Third-party cookie
Third-party cookies are cookies set with different domains from the one shown on the address bar (i.e. the web pages on that domain may feature content from a third-party domain – e.g. Google Maps or YouTube). Privacy setting options in most modern browsers allow you to block third-party tracking cookies.
Cookies perform many different functions. These are the most common:
Essential cookies
Some cookies are essential for the operation of our websites. For example, some cookies allow us to identify logged in users and ensure they can access the relevant pages.
Performance Cookies
We may utilise other cookies to analyse how our visitors use our websites and to monitor website performance. This allows us to provide a high quality experience by customising our offering and quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages.
Functionality Cookies
We may use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences, for example which language you want to see the website in. We may also use functionality cookies to provide you with enhanced services such as allowing you to watch a video online.
Behaviourally Targeted Advertising Cookies
These cookies would allow us to track the performance and usage of the web site with anonymised “statistics”. These cookies would be used to track your route around the web site and we would use the statistics that these create to improve the web site’s performance and user experience. We do not use this type of cookie.
The principal law which governs how websites use cookies and similar technologies when storing information on a user’s equipment, such as their computer or mobile device, is the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations. The regulations were amended on 9 January 2019. Regulation 6 covers the use of electronic communications networks to store information (e.g. cookies) or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user. The change in the law was prompted by concerns about online tracking of individuals and is intended to protect the privacy of users by requiring their knowledge and agreement to the use of cookies, even where the information collected is not directly personally identifiable.
You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clicking on the ‘C’ icon. You can then adjust the available sliders to ‘On’ or ‘Off’, then clicking ‘Save and close’. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.
Alternatively, most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:
To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer’s website.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
National Centre for Accessible Transport does not use cookies to store personal data about you, and will make no attempt to identify you through use of cookies. The tables below provide an overview of all the cookies used on the National Centre for Accessible Transport website, including details of the provider, its source, type, duration, and the reason for its use.
