Cookies policy

About cookies

Cookies – small information files placed on your device – are used to improve services for you by, for example:

enabling the service to recognise your device so you do not need to give the same information repeatedly
recognising when you have already given a username and password so that you do not need to do so for every subsequent web page you visit
Improving services we provide by providing you with a personalised journey, where applicable
measuring how many people are using the services we provide, so we can make them easier and faster to use
analysing data, anonymously, to help us understand how people interact with government services.

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your computer, mobile phone or whatever device you are using to access the internet. This information is held in cookies. You can learn more about cookies from GOV.UK guidance on cookies (opens in a new window).

For more information about how to remove cookies from your device, or how to block individual cookies from being received, please see the instructions and guidance at www.aboutcookies.org (opens in a new window).

Cookies can be classified into persistent or session and first party or third party, explained below:

Session cookies are created temporarily when you a visit a website, for example to remember your information entered in a form when navigating to different pages. They do not contain any personal information about you and are deleted when you leave the site

Persistent cookies (also called a stored or permanent cookie) are used to collect information such as web surfing behaviour or preferences for a specific website. These cookies are not deleted when you leave the website, but expire after a set period

First or third party cookies - these describe whether the cookies are issued by the website that you are currently visiting (first party) or by a different site (third party).

Our use of cookies

Google Analytics sets a number of cookies to help us evaluate the use of our website, for example the number of visitors we have and the pages visited. Full details are available from the Google Analytics website (opens in a new window).

Name: _utma
Description: The _utma cookie is part of Google analytics, and is primarily used to track visits to any site which uses Google analytics. _utma stores the number of visits made from your device, the time of the first visit, the previous visit, and the current visit. This cookie does not contain any personal information other than the IP address of your device. For more information read Google’s privacy policy (opens in a new window).
Expires: 2 years
Type: Persistent, first party

Name: _utmb
Description: The _utmb cookie is part of Google analytics, and is primarily used to track visits to any site which uses Google analytics. _utmb stores the number of visits made from your device, the time of the first visit, the previous visit, and the current visit. This cookie does not contain any personal information other than the IP address of your device. For more information read Google’s privacy policy (opens in a new window).
Expires: 30 minutes
Type: Persistent, first party

Name: _utmc
Description: The _utmv cookie is part of Google analytics. It contains no specific customer data other than the IP address of your device, but is used to record custom variables for segmentation. For more information read Google’s privacy policy (opens in a new window).
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Session, first party

Name: _utmz
Description: The _utmv cookie is part of Google analytics. It contains no specific customer data other than the IP address of your device, but is used to record Custom variables for segmentation. For more information read Google’s privacy policy (opens in a new window).
Expires: 6 months
Type: Persistent, first party

You can opt-out of Google Analytics cookies by following the instructions on opt-out of Google Analytics (Plugin) (opens in a new window)

The content management system (CMS) we used to build our website does not require the use of any cookies by default: however, for this site we have set it to use some cookies to improve performance. Three 'session' cookies are created when a visitor to our website does the following:

Logs in to the website
Clicks one of the contrast buttons.

The three cookies are used to cross-reference each other for improved security.

Name: CFID CFTOKEN
Description: Remembers that the user has chosen a high contrast or low contrast stylesheet.
Caches data against the session in order to maximise performance.
Expiry: 2 hours
Type: persistent, first party

Name: JSESSIONID
Description: When a user logs in, maintains authentication state, access rights, etc.
Expiry: Browser close
Type: Session, first party

Name: ServerID
Description: To provide an improved and faster server time, the ServerID cookie remembers which server should handle the user’s requests.
Expiry: Browser close
Type: Session, first party

Third party cookies

The YouTube players found on this website also use cookies to help measure how many times each player has been used. The information gathered by these third party players is anonymous but is stored outside of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust’s control. As we do not control dissemination of these cookies you should refer to the relevant third party website for information on their cookies.