Cookies

The www.cheshireeast.gov.uk website uses cookies to help us see which pages people are looking at most, least and how they get to a page. Understanding this helps us to improve our web site. We do not collect personal information via cookies and we do not pass information to advertisers.

EU Directive on cookies

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 recently came into effect. According to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), website owners are required to obtain consent from visitors to their website before placing cookies on their computers.

By using our site, you are giving us your implied consent to set cookies on your computer. Should you not wish to accept cookies from us, you may need to change your browser's configuration to prevent them from being set, or arrange to opt out (where possible).

This page explains more about what cookies are, why and how we use them and it also gives information about how you can control the use of cookies on your computer.

What is a cookie?

Data under a magnifying glass A cookie is string of text information that is placed on your computer via your web browser. It can store information that relates to your use of a website. This website, like most others, uses cookies.

Cookies are often used for statistical recording (telling us which pages were visited and when)and for enabling you to set user preferences so that when you return to our website, some of your preferences can be automatically applied.

We do not use cookies to collect information about you that would make you personally identifiable and we do not collect any sensitive personal data via cookies. However, if you have given us information about yourself on our site before, we might be able to connect your personal information to your cookie information. Furthermore, we do not show advertisements on our site which are controlled by external parties.

Cookies can be either temporary or longer lasting. A session cookie exists for the duration of your visit to the website and is deleted when you leave it. A persistent cookie has a set lifespan and will remain on your computer for a specific length of time unless otherwise deleted by you.

Cookies used on the Cheshire East site

Google Analytics

Like many websites, we use Google Analytics to help us to identify the way in which our website is used so we can try to improve it. The following cookies are set by Google analytics:

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These are all used to collect non-personal information about how visitors use our site in terms of the numbers of visitors, the pages that they visit and the website they came from.

Find out more about Google analytics cookies

Remarketing cookies

We also use cookies on specific pages for remarketing purposes. For example, once you have visited the registering to vote page of this website and then you visit another website which has adform.net adverts, you will see an advert to remind you of our service. This third-party cookie acts as a reminder service and cannot track your route around the Cheshire East Council website.

Other cookies

There are many applications on the Cheshire East website that rely on cookies to process your information. By application, we are referring to a part of the website that has a specific purpose which involves you being asked to enter information. For example, if you log in to your council tax account online. Without cookies, many of these applications would not function properly.

The following cookies may also be set when you visit our site:

email -subscription - this sets a cookie which stores your email address. You have to opt-in to use this feature.
ASP.NET_SessionId - This cookie is used purely to track the sequence of pages a visitor looks at during a visit to the site. This information can be used to reduce user journeys, and enable visitors to find relevant information quicker.

Live Well in Cheshire East

In addition to Google Analytics cookies, the Live Well in Cheshire East service provider portal at livewellservices.cheshireeast.gov.uk uses the following cookies:

Managing your current visit

Name: ASP.NET_SessionId
Purpose: Stores the user's session ID to allow the site to recognise your movement around the site as being from one computer.
Data stored by cookie: Information about the user’s current session.
Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).
More information: Without this cookie, much of the website’s functionality would be impaired, such as searching and filtering results, navigation breadcrumbs, etc.

Managing your shortlist

Name: Shortlist
Purpose: Records the services the user has added to their shortlist.
Data stored by cookie: The IDs of the services in the shortlist.
Duration of cookie: 1 year.
More information: Without this cookie the user would not be able to add services to their shortlist or have them be persisted there between visits to the site.

Logging in to the administrative area

Name: sqlAuthCookie
Purpose: Records that the user has successfully logged into their MarketPlace account.
Data stored by cookie: An encrypted authentication key.
Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).
More information: Without this cookie the user would not be able to log in to the website.

In addition, as a third party (e.g. service provider) or Local Authority user of the MarketPlace, when you log into your account, the MarketPlace will use cookies to remember various configurations you make throughout the administrative area. These are not recorded by the server.

Social media and third party cookies

Where we link to external social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Flickr, these sites may set cookies when you visit them. You will need to refer to their respective privacy policies to see how this information is used.

If you click on links posted on Twitter by Cheshire East Council, these may be shortened links that have been processed by Bit.ly. Bit.ly provides us with anonymised statistics about these links which can tell us how many times they have been clicked. This can help us to assess the effectiveness of our use of social media. Bit.ly do not have any access to any data collected on our website.

See Bit.ly's Privacy Policy for more information (this also includes a link through which you can opt-out of Bit.ly cookies)

Facebook

This website (www.cheshireeast.gov.uk) and the site at cheshireeastjobs.co.uk use Facebook tracking technology called Facebook pixel. As such, if you are logged on to Facebook while using these websites, Facebook will be able to identify that you have visited this site. We may collect or receive information from Facebook to provide measurement services and target ads.

Control Facebook’s use of cookies to show you ads

You can control how Facebook use data to show you ads by using the tools described on the Facebook Cookies and Other Storage Technologies page.

Opting out

You can prevent us from setting cookies by making changes to your browser settings. For more information, please refer to your browser's 'Help' function. If you do choose to restrict the setting of cookies, this may stop the site from appearing to work properly when you visit it.

It is possible to opt-out of allowing Google cookies to be set. Visit the Google Opt-out page to find out how to do this.

Do Not Track (DNT) browser setting

DNT is a feature offered by some browsers which, when enabled, sends a signal to websites to request that your browsing is not tracked, such as by third party ad networks, social networks and analytic companies. The cheshireeast.gov.uk website does respond to DNT requests.