Privacy Policy

  

What is this Privacy Policy for?

This privacy policy  governs this website and the privacy of its users who choose to use it.

The policy sets out the different areas where user privacy is concerned and outlines the obligations & requirements of the users, website maintenance and website owners. Furthermore the way this website processes, stores and protects user data and information will also be detailed within this policy.

The Website

This website and its owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure the necessary steps are taken to protect the privacy of its users throughout their visiting experience. This website complies to all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.

Contact & Communication

Users contacting this website and/or its owners do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time that it is no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form for the email submission process is available but we advise those using such forms that they do so at their own risk.

This website and its owners use any information submitted to provide you with further information about the products/services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. This includes using your details to subscribe you to any email newsletter program the website operates, but only if this was made clear to you and your expressed permission was granted when submitting any form to email process, or whereby you the consumer have previously purchased from or enquired about purchasing from the company a product or service that the email newsletter relates to. This is by no means an entire list of your user rights in regard to receiving email marketing material. Your details are not passed on to any third parties.

Email Newsletter

This website operates an email newsletter program, used to inform subscribers about products and services supplied by this website. Users can subscribe through an online automated process should they wish to do so but do so at their own discretion. Some subscriptions may be manually processed through prior written agreement with the user.

Subscriptions are taken in compliance with UK Spam Laws detailed in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. All personal details relating to subscriptions are held securely and in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. No personal details are passed on to third parties nor shared with companies/people outside of the company that operates this website. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 you may request a copy of personal information held about you by this website’s email newsletter program. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to the business address at the bottom of this policy.

Email marketing campaigns published by this website or its owners may contain tracking facilities within the actual email. Subscriber activity is tracked and stored in a database for future analysis and evaluation. Such tracked activity may include: the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity [this is by no means a comprehensive list].

This information is used to refine future email campaigns and supply the user with more relevant content based around their activity.

In compliance with UK Spam Laws and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 subscribers are given the opportunity to un-subscribe at any time through an automated system. This process is detailed at the footer of each email campaign. If an automated un-subscription system is unavailable clear instructions on how to un-subscribe will by detailed instead.

External Links

Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links users should always adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned through this website.

The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Adverts and Sponsored Links

This website may contain sponsored links and adverts. These will typically be served through our advertising partners, who may have detailed privacy policies relating directly to the adverts they serve.

Clicking on any such adverts will send you to the advertiser’s website through a referral program which may use cookies and will track the number of referrals sent from this website. This may include the use of cookies which may in turn be saved on your computers hard drive. Users should therefore note they click on sponsored external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social Media Platforms

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate/engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details. This website nor its owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email.

This website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.

Shortened Links in Social Media

This website and its owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy URL’s [web addresses] (this is an example: http://bit.ly/zyVUBo).

Users are advised to take caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened URL’s published on social media platforms by this website and its owners. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine URL’s are published many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking, and therefore this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.

Resources & Further Information

Cookies

 This policy is split into four sections:

 
1. What are cookies and tracking technologies?
2. The cookies and tracking technologies we use now and how to delete them
3. Our classification of cookies
4. Our main technology partners
 

1. What are cookies and tracking technologies?

 
Where we talk about cookies on our websites, we mean cookies and web beacons.
 
What is a cookie? 
A cookie is a text file containing a small amount of data which is downloaded to your computer when you visit one of our websites or see one of our adverts elsewhere on the internet.  The vast majority of websites use cookies and tracking technologies.  Cookies are useful because they help us arrange the content and layout of our websites and recognise those computers that have been to our websites before. They allow us to remember your preference settings and play an important role in helping us to enhance the usability and performance of our websites and your experience using them.  Some cookies are also essential to enable you to move around our website and use its features. They also help us to identify which of our articles are the most popular and the types of journey visitors have to our websites.
 
 
What is a Flash cookie?  
This is a type of cookie which is collected via Adobe Flash media player – a piece of software which you probably have on your computer to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.  We do not use Flash cookies at the moment.
 
Have a look at Adobe’s website if you want to control Flash cookies on your computer. If you use the Firefox browser you can also get an add-on to detect and delete Flash cookies.
 
What is a web beacon?
Web beacons are usually tiny transparent images that help website owners track the activity of users on certain web pages. They can also send the website owner (for example, us or our technology partners) information in cookies such as whether an email with a web beacon in it has been opened. We use web beacons together with cookies to help us understand how you interact with our websites and the emails we send you; to help us improve your browsing experience; to ensure that content is relevant to you; and to better manage our website and email content.
 

2. The cookies and tracking technologies we use now and how to delete them

 
When you access our websites you will receive a message advising you that we have placed some cookies on your computer.  This was necessary in order to display the website page to you.  If you continue to use our websites, further cookies will be placed on your computer to maximise your experience on our websites and to help us understand how we can improve them.
 
If you don’t want us to place cookies on your computer then there are a number of ways you can opt out – setting your browser either to reject all cookies, to only allow “trusted” sites to set them, or to accept only those cookies from those websites which you are currently on.
 
Please remember – if you do delete all your cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, will not work and your experience on our websites may be affected.
 
We like the website www.aboutcookies.org which is run by the law firm Pinsent Masons. Not only does it have the recipe for ‘the world’s finest cookies’, it also gives you detailed step by step guidance on how to control and delete cookies depending on your browser type. You can then adjust your browser settings to your preferred level of protection.
 
We have also included links to the privacy and cookie policies of our technology partners in our our cookie list so that you can control the cookies they place more easily.
 

3. Our classification of cookies

We have reviewed all the cookies we use and have divided them into four categories:
 
Strictly Necessary
Performance
Functionality
Advertising or tracking
 
Strictly Necessary
These cookies are essential to enable you to move around the websites and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the websites.  Without these cookies, our websites won’t work properly.
 
Performance
These cookies collect information about how you use our websites, for instance, which pages you go to most often and if you get error messages from those pages.  We only use these cookies to improve how our websites work.
 
Functionality
These cookies allow us to remember the choices you make (such as your user name) and provide enhanced, more personal features.  These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of our web pages that you can customise.  They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as watching a video or commenting on a blog.  
 
Advertising or Tracking Cookies
We do not accept advertising from any other organisation on our websites.  We do however advertise our own products and services on our websites and you may see adverts for us elsewhere on the internet.  The cookies we use to present you with adverts may be based on the content you visit the most on our websites, so we can let you know about what we think you will be interested in.  The cookies show us where you saw the advert; help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns; and limit the number of times you see an advert.  We also use cookies to tailor the content of our weekly members’ newsletter and the emails we send you so that the content is more relevant to you.  As a member you can also visit your My Account section of our website and chose the content you would like to receive in your newsletters.  We also include links to social networks like Facebook who may subsequently use information about your visit to target advertising to you on their websites.

4. Our main technology partners

We work with the following companies in maintaining and improving our website. A brief description of what they do is found below. We ensure that any company which works with us and collects personal data complies with strict data protection standards. If you have any more questions, please do contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
 

Add This | Privacy Policy

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
 
 
 

Google & Google Analytics | Privacy Policy

We use Google Analytics Premium, a web analytics service provided by Google Ireland Limited (“Google”).  Google Analytics Premium uses cookies to help analyse how users use our websites. The information generated by the cookies about your use of our websites and your current IP-address will be transmitted by your browser to and will be stored by Google on servers in the United States and other countries. Google will use this information on our behalf for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to us. The IP address collected through Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. You may also stop the transmission of information generated by the cookies about your use of the website and of your IP address to Google, by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on available here http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.  
 
In addition, we use Google’s remarketing technology to advertise online.  In doing so, Google will place or read a unique ad-serving cookie on your computer and will use non-personal information about your browser and your activity on our sites to serve ads on their content network.  Please click here for more information about remarketing or to opt-out of the Google remarketing cookie.