Cookies

We use cookies to store information on your computer. This allows us to improve your experience of the website.

By using our site you are allowing us to store these cookies, and below you can find out why we use them and find information on how you can disable them.

What are Cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that resides on your computer. Cookies are used to remember your settings when you revisit a website and to identify how visitors navigate the site.

Cookies provide valuable information to website owners to adapt and make changes to the site in order to improve the user experience.

Please note that settings on this website are set by default to allow all cookies to give you the best experience.

What cookies do we use?

Preston.gov.uk uses cookies in a couple of places - we've listed them below with details of why we use them and how long they will last.

The cookies we use will never identify you personally or give us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you have chosen to provide. You can delete any cookies that your browser has stored.

Measuring website usage

Google Analytics 

Our website uses Google Analytics to track our website usage. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs.

View the Cookies and information stored by Google Analytics

We never store any personal data such as your name or address so the information we collect can never be used to identify you.  Google does not share your analytics information with anyone else.

Cookies set by Google Analytics

Cookie Name - _ga

This cookie is installed by Google Analytics.

The _ga cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report.

The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.

Duration - 2 years

Cookie Name - _gid

This cookie is installed by Google Analytics.

The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing.

The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visited in an anonymous form.

Duration - 1 day

Cookie Name - _gat

This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the collection of data on high traffic sites.

Duration - 1 minute

Cookies set by Recite Me

The website uses Recite Me, which is accessibility software to help personalise and customise your website experience with us.

Recite Me only use cookies for a handful of things, which includes:

• Access tokens - these are a form of session-ID that is used for API requests to validate users, there is no data transferred other than a true or false value
• Preferences - UI preferences are normally saved on our server but may be stored in a cookie as a fall back if this process fails.
• Activate Persistence - We use cookies to activate persistence, so once a user has activated the Recite Me Toolbar it will remain open as a user continues their visit throughout your website viewing multiple pages.

Cookies set by our Capita Payment system

We use Capita for our payment management system. Some online forms give the ability to pay for services online.

This service uses session cookies only and required for the application to work. They hold information when you move between pages.

They do not hold any personally identifiable or sensitive data and are deleted instantly when you leave the website.

The cookie contains no data that could be used by other websites or this site in the future.

Cookie Name - JSESSIONID

Duration - deleted after you leave the payment portal

Cookies set by our online form system or session cookies

Session cookies are used for remembering user selections during their visit to your site.

Cookies are also used when a customer visits any form on the site. This is used to track the users session as they complete the form.

The cookie is used as an identifier for form filling purposes only.

Cookies Name - ASP.NET_SessionId or ASPSESSIONID#### or csession

Duration - The cookie is only valid during current browser session and it will be deleted when you close the browser.

Cookies set by our Citizen Portal or email alert system

Cookies are used if you register on the website to sign up to self-serve or receive email alerts

Cookies Name - .ASPXAUTH.ModuleServices.Member or memberInfo 

Duration - Cookies are only set when a customer logs into the website. This stores information for authentication purposes.

Cookies set by YouTube

We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode.

This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode.

Cookies from other organisations

Please note that some cookies are not related to Preston.gov.uk, this includes websites that you can link to from our website. Unless specifically stated, we encourage you to read the cookie and privacy statements on any other websites you visit.

How to disable and delete cookies

All recent versions of popular browsers give users some control over cookies. You can set your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies or accept/reject cookies for certain websites.

The website About Cookies offers comprehensive information on how you can control cookies in all of the popular browsers.