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Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files that contain small pieces of data that are saved on your device when you visit a website. Cookies can be used to give you a more personalised experience and/or to collect information about your visit. For example, if you log into a website, a cookie might remember your username so you don’t have to type it in every time.

Some cookies are only stored during your browsing session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser. Others are stored on your device and retain your preferences for a particular website.

The main cookie categories are:

  • Essential or necessary. These provide core functionality and enable a website to function properly.
  • Preference or functional. These remember your preferences like your language, location, preferred font size or colour theme.
  • Performance or analytics. These collect information about how you use the sites you visit, such as which pages you visit and how long you stay on the site. This can inform how the website is performing and where improvements can be made.
  • Marketing / targeting/ advertising. These are used to show you ads that are relevant to your interests on other websites.

All websites must to ask the visitor for consent before storing any cookies. This is a legal requirement. This is generally done through the use of a cookie consent tool, which ask the website visitor to either:

  • accept all cookies
  • reject all but the essential cookies or
  • select specific cookies that they are comfortable with.

More information on cookies and legal compliance: www.aboutcookies.org.

We use a cookie consent tool called CookieHub for the corporate website and many of our programme and tool-based sites (managed by the digial marketing team). However, some of our sites use alternative cookie tools.

The following guidance applies to all Energy Saving Trust or co-branded websites.

The cookie notice should appear automatically when a visitor first accesses the site. It’s best practice to display it as an overlay. Other options may include a pop-up (visually similar to an overlay, but it obstructs access to the content) or a notification bar, which is generally set to the top or bottom of the screen.

There should always be a simple, visible method for a visitor to change their cookie preferences. We use a cookie icon, visible in the bottom-left of the browser.

Current default settings are:

  • Button: #1F201F
  • Text: #00FFFF