Cookie policy

When we provide information, we want to make the process easy and reliable. Where we do this on the internet, it sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example your computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to: enable us to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task; and measure how many people are accessing information, so that there is enough capacity to ensure that this can be done quickly and easily.

Cookies in the analytics category are opted into by the user through the cookies banner when you first come to the site. Cookies in the essential category are required by the site to run correctly and therefore always need to be on.

The table below explains the cookies we use on the consultation area and why.

Category Name Set by Duration Description
Essential has_js Application Upon leaving the site Used to record whether or not the user's browser has JavaScript enabled. This allows us decide what kind of functionality is supported
Essential SESS* Application 23 days Track the user's session so that requests and responses can be matched up. This allows log-in functionality to work and prevents certain types of security exploits.
Essential AWSALB Application 1 hour Used to create sticky server sessions
Essential cookie-agreed Application 3 months Stores whether a user has provided consent for cookies to be stored.
Essential cookie-agreed-categories Application 3 months Stores which cookies a user has consented to.
Essential cookie-agreed-version Application 3 months Stores which cookie policy version a user has consented to.
Essential CookieControl Ordance Survey 90 seconds Enables the effective loading of basemap tiles on the map interface.
Analytics _ga Google Analytics 2 years Used to distinguish different users for the purposes of collecting information on site usage.
Analytics _gid Google Analytics 24 hours Used to distinguish different users for the purposes of collecting information on site usage.
Analytics _gat Google Analytics 1 minute Used to throttle the request rate to Google Analytics.