Cookie Policy
This Cookie Policy explains how Wey Valley Solar Schools Energy Co-operative, doing business as Wey Valley Solar Schools Energy Co-operative (“we,” “us,” and “our”) uses cookies and similar technologies to recognize you when you visit our website at www.weyvalleysolar.co.uk. It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of them.
This policy should be read together with our Privacy Policy which sets out how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information generally, as well as your rights in relation to your personal information.
What are cookies and why do we use them?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your device’s hard drive and may be used to distinguish you from other website users.
Cookies are commonly used to improve the performance of websites, to optimise user and to provide website owners with information on how their website is used. For example, cookies may monitor how many times someone visits a website, which pages are read on that website, and where website users are located. Some of this data will be aggregated or statistical, which means you will not be identified individually.
For further information on cookies generally, including how to control and manage them, visit the guidance on cookies published by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, http://www.aboutcookies.org or http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
Cookies we use
We use the following types of cookies on our website:
Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are necessary for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to navigate our site, display the correct page for the device you are using, and donate using our donation platform. These cookies are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as filling in forms.
You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but this may mean that some parts of our website will not work.
Optional cookies
Analytics / statistical cookies: These cookies allow us to track visits to our site and traffic sources so we can measure and improve performance. They also help us to understand how visitors move around our site and which pages are the most popular, so that we can optimise our website. All of the information these cookies collect is anonymised. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited or how you have used our site.
Functional cookies: These allow websites to remember the user’s site preferences and choices they make on the site including username, region, and language. This allows the website to provide personalized features like local news stories and weather if you share your location.
Advertising cookies: Google uses cookies for advertising, including serving and rendering ads, personalizing ads (depending on your ad settings at g.co/adsettings), limiting the number of times an ad is shown to a user, muting ads you have chosen to stop seeing, and measuring the effectiveness of ads.
Security cookies: Cookies used for security authenticate users, prevent fraud, and protect users as they interact with a service.
We use ‘first party cookies’, which are set and collected by us and are only used by our website when you visit it.
We also use ‘third party cookies’ set and collected by our website service providers and our social media service providers. Third parties may use cookies on their own websites, and you may receive cookies delivered from these websites. We have no access to, or control of these cookies, should this occur. To understand more about third-party cookies used or to deactivate the use of third-party cookies, please visit the relevant provider’s websites directly.
Cookies may be either “persistent” or “session” cookies.
Persistent cookies consist of a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, that will be stored by the browser and remain valid until a set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). Persistent or tracking cookies are employed to store user preferences and allow to customise how information is presented through site layouts or themes (for example, allow to retain website language preference).
Session cookies, on the other hand, are used by the server to store information about user page activities during a session, so that users can easily pick up where they left off on the server’s pages or, for example, can store ordering information needed to make shopping carts work. Session cookies will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.
Further information about the duration that cookies used on our website are stored is set out at the end of this policy.
Third parties serve cookies through our website for analytics and other purposes. This is described in more detail below.
The specific types of first and third party cookies served through our website and the purposes they perform are described below (please note that the specific cookies served may vary depending on the specific page you visit.
How can I control cookies?
We will ask for your consent to place all cookies or other similar technologies on your device, except where they are essential for us to provide you with a service that you have requested, i.e. strictly necessary cookies.
You may refuse or withdraw your consent to the use of optional cookies by setting your preferences in the Cookie Consent Manager. The Cookie Consent Manager allows you to select which categories of cookies you accept or reject. Essential cookies cannot be rejected as they are strictly necessary to provide you with services.
The Cookie Consent Manager can be found in the notification banner. If you do not wish to consent to our use of optional cookies, you may still use our website though your access to some functionality and areas of our website may be restricted.
Most browsers have built in privacy settings that provide differing levels of cookie acceptance, expiration time, and disposal after a user has visited a particular site. You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. As the means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser, you should visit your browser’s help menu for more information.
Please note, if you block strictly necessary cookies then you may be unable to access certain areas of our website and certain pages will not function properly. We cannot accept liability for any malfunctioning of the User’s device or its installed web browser as a result of any attempt to turn off cookies.
Our use of cookies
The specific types of first and third party cookies served through our website and the purposes they perform are described below.
Strictly Necessary Cookies:
Name: _GRECAPTCHA
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google
Provider: Google
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Strictly necessary
Name: DV
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google and is used to collect information about how visitors use the Site and use the information to compile reports and to help improve the Site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the Site, where visitors have come to the Site from and the pages they visited.
Provider: Google
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Strictly necessary
Duration: Session
Name: cmplz_***
Purpose: A series of consent cookies starting cmplz_ will start depending upon which options you select when deciding whether to allow or reject cookies on our cookie banner.
Provider: Complianz
Domain: https://weyvalleysolar.co.uk
Cookie Type: Strictly necessary
Duration: Persistent
Optional Cookies
Name: _ga
Purpose: This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports.
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://weyvalleysolar.co.uk
Cookie Type: Analytics / Statistical
Duration: Persistent (2 years)
Name: _gid
Purpose: This cookie stores and updates a unique value for each page visited and is used to count and track page views.
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://weyvalleysolar.co.uk
Cookie Type: Analytics / Statistical
Duration: Persistent (1 day)
Name: _gat
Purpose: This cookie is part of Google Analytics and is used to limit requests (throttle request rate).
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://weyvalleysolar.co.uk
Cookie Type: Analytics / Statistical
Duration: Persistent (1 minute)
Name: 1P_JAR
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google. These cookies are used to collect website statistics and track conversion rates.
Provider: Google
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Advertising
Duration: Persistent (30 days)
Name: ANID
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google and is used to show Google ads on non-Google sites.
Provider: Google
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Advertising
Duration: Persistent (13 months)
Name: AEC
Purpose: KPI (key performance indicator) offering insights into our websites performance.
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Analytics/Statistical
Name: NID
Purpose: This cookie is a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language, how many search results you wish to have shown per page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://www.google.com
Cookie Type: Functional
Duration: Persistent (6 months)
Name: OGPC
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Advertising
Duration: Persistent (30 days)
Name: SNID
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Advertising
Duration: Persistent (30 days)
Name: pm_sess
Purpose: This cookie is associated with Google. This cookie prevents malicious sites acting without a user’s knowledge and as if they were that user.
Provider: Google Analytics
Domain: https://google.com
Cookie Type: Functional
Duration: Session (30 minutes)
Name: pref
Purpose: This cookie stores information such as a user’s preferred page configuration and playback preferences like autoplay, shuffle content, and player size.
Provider: YouTube
Domain: https://youtube.com
Cookie Type: Functional
Duration: Persistent (8 months)
Name: visitor_info1_live
Purpose: This cookie tries to estimate the users’ bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos.
Provider: YouTube
Domain: https://youtube.com
Cookie Type: Functional
Duration: Persistent (6 months)
Name: YSC
Purpose: This cookie is used to remember user input and associate a user’s actions.
Provider: YouTube
Domain: https://youtube.com
Cookie Type: Functional
Duration: Session
What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?
Cookies are not the only way to recognize or track visitors to a website. We may use other, similar technologies from time to time, like web beacons (sometimes called “tracking pixels” or “clear gifs”). These are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognize when someone has visited our Websites or opened an e-mail including them. This allows us, for example, to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one page within a website to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you have come to the website from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, to improve site performance, and to measure the success of e-mail marketing campaigns. In many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly, and so declining cookies will impair their functioning.
Updating this Cookie Policy
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Please therefore re-visit this Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.
Where can I get further information?
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us at info@weyvalleysolar.co.uk or by post to:
Wey Valley Solar Schools Energy Co-operative Limited
Unit 26, Trinity Enterprise Centre
Furness Business Park
Barrow-in-Furness
Cumbria
LA14 2PN
Phone: 01229 821028