Cookie Policy
Torfaen County Borough Council uses cookies to personalise user experience on the website, and to track how our site is being used. Here you can find out more about how we use them.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small, harmless files placed on your computer’s hard drive or in your browser memory when you visit a website
What do cookies do?
Cookies help to make the interaction between users and websites faster and easier. What cookies don't do is store any personal or confidential information about you.
Are cookies safe?
Yes, cookies are harmless text files. They can’t look into your computer or read any personal information or other material on your hard drive. Cookies can’t carry viruses or install anything harmful on your computer.
Why should I keep cookies switched on?
We advise you to keep cookies active during your visits to our website because parts of the site rely on them to work properly.
Types of cookie we use
Like most large websites, Torfaen County Borough Council uses session cookies and persistent cookies. Neither session cookies nor persistent cookies collect any personally identifiable information.
Session cookies
We use session cookies, which last only for the duration of your visit (your 'session') and are deleted when you close your browser. These simply enable us to identify that the same person is moving from page to page.
Persistent cookies
We also use certain cookies that are persistent, meaning that they last beyond your session. Persistent cookies help our website remember you as a user each time you use the same computer to revisit us.
Cookies currently used
This website uses cookies in several places – we’ve listed each of them below along with more details about why we use them and how long they will last.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics cookies to collect information about how visitors use this site and when issues are encountered (such as broken links). Google analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you were on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not store your personal information so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our data.
We use Google Analytics to make sure our website is meeting our users’ needs and to help prioritise improvements. Google provides more details on the Google privacy and cookie policy page. Google also provides a browser add-on which allows you to opt out of Google Analytics across all websites.
| Cookie Name | Typical Use | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | This cookie is a Google Analytics persistent cookie which is used to distinguish unique users. | 2 years unless cookie are cleared by user |
| _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. | 24 hours |
| _gat | These are third party cookies that are placed on your device to allow us to use the Google Analytics service. These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website | 1 minute |
| ConsentCookie | Remembers if you have allowed or declined cookies on this site | 30 days |
Turning cookies on or off
You have a number of options when it comes to receiving cookies. You can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only 'trusted' sites to send them, or to accept only those cookies from websites you are currently using.
We recommend that you don't block all cookies because parts of our website rely on them to work properly.
To find out how to turn cookies on and off in your browser, click on your browser name below.
To learn more about cookies in general and how to manage them, visit www.aboutcookies.org