What is a Cookie?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Cookies are used to remember your settings when you revisit a website and to identify how visitors navigate the site. Cookies provide valuable information to website owners to adapt and make changes to the site in order to improve the user experience.
Why we use cookies
In common with many websites we use a number of different types of cookies to help improve your experience of using our website, specifically by:
- Remembering preferences you have previously indicated to us.
- Ensuring we know when you are logged in and logging you out automatically after a period of time to protect you against misuse.
- Understanding how many people have visited our website, the search terms they are using and the journeys they make in order to locate content.
- To provide additional functionality, typically via third party tools, to enhance the website
We do not use the information captured for any other purpose.
How do I control what cookies are used?
You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clicking on the ‘C’ icon, or opening up the Cookies Panel.
You can then adjust the available sliders to ‘On’ or ‘Off’, then clicking ‘Save and close’, or you can choose to accept the recommended setting. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.
Alternatively, most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. Find out more about how to manage cookies on the Information Commissioner's Office website.
You can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites by visiting this page on Google.
Cookies used on this website
Necessary cookies
Necessary cookies | Cookie | Name(s) | Purpose |
| Cookie preference | CookieControl | This cookie is used to remember a user’s choice about cookies on n-kesteven.gov.uk. Where users have previously indicated a preference, that user’s preference will be stored in this cookie. |
Session cookies
| ASP.NET_SessionId
ASPSESSIONIDSADTTCCA
ASPSESSIONIDSGAQCSQQ
JSESSIONID
| These are session cookies which identify you as a unique user whilst a browsing our website(s). These cookies expire when you close your browser. |
Analytical Cookies
Analytical cookies | Cookie | Name(s) | Purpose |
| Universal Analytics (Google) | _ga
_gid
_gat
_gat_UA-xxxxxxxx-x
(where each x is a number) | These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. Read Google's overview of privacy and safeguarding data |
| Monsido | monsido | We use the tools at monsido.com to help us find, identify and correct spelling errors and improve the quality and accessibility of this website to make it easier to find and use. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form.
|
Functional cookies
Functional cookies | Cookie | Name(s) | Purpose |
Translation cookie
| googtrans | This cookie is used to remember your language preferences |
Easysite cookie
| AllowEasysiteCookies
| This cookie is used by our Content Management System (CMS) to determine if certain functionality can be displayed, where that functionality may set additional cookies
|
'Speak it' tool cookies
| ASP.NET_SessionId
JSESSIONID | Session cookies to identify you as a unique user to the insipio 'Speak it' tool. These cookies expire when you close your browser. |
Slide In (pop up)
| slidein_*
(where * is the 'name' of each different 'pop up' type)
| This cookie determines if you have seen and interacted with 'pop ups' that we use on the site to highlight certain content that may be relevant to you. No personal information is stored in this cookie.
|
| GovDelivery Overlay local storage |
UKNORTHKESTEVEN_subscribe_overlay |
This local storage setting determines if you have seen and interacted with the GovDelivery email subscription pop up box - GovDelivery is provided by Granicus |
Additional Third Party cookies
Youtube
On some parts of this site, we use YouTube to display videos. We embed videos using YouTube's privacy enhanced mode, which only sets cookies once you play the video. YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information. Read more at YouTube's embedding videos information page. You can also read YouTube’s Privacy Policy.
HotJar
We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.
Additional Third Party cookies | Cookie | Name(s) | Purpose |
Youtube preferences cookie
| PREF | This cookie is set by Youtube and is used to remember user preferences such as language settings. This cookie is set to expire in 2 years
|
Youtube Visitor info cookie
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
| This cookie is set by Youtube when viewing a page with Youtube videos on it. It is set by Youtube so they can count the views of embedded Youtube videos on them. This cookie is set to expire in 9 months
|
Youtube privacy enhanced cookies
| VSC
remote_sid
| Used by YouTube's privacy enhanced mode. These cookies expire when you close your browser. |
HotJar Survey invitation cookie
| _hjClosedSurveyInvites
| This cookie is set once a visitor interacts with a Survey invitation modal popup. It is used to ensure that the same invite does not re-appear if it has already been shown. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. |
| HotJar Feedback Poll Done cookie | _hjDonePolls
| This cookie is set once a visitor completes a poll using the Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the same poll does not re-appear if it has already been filled in. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. |
| HotJar Feedback Poll Minimised cookie | _hjMinimizedPolls | This cookie is set once a visitor minimizes a Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimizes when the visitor navigates through your site. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. |
| HotJar Recruit User Testers cookie | _hjDoneTestersWidgets
| This cookie is set once a visitor submits their information in the Recruit User Testers widget. It is used to ensure that the same form does not re-appear if it has already been filled in. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. |
| HotJar included in the sample cookie | _hjIncludedInSample
| This session cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the sample which is used to generate funnels. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. |
| HotJar Incoming Feedback cookie | _hjShownFeedbackMessage | This cookie is set when a visitor minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if they navigate to another page where it is set to show. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. This may also stored in localStorage or sessionStorage. |
| HotJar initial cookie | _hjid
| This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. This cookie is set to expire in 365 days. This may also stored in localStorage or sessionStorage. |
| HotJar sessionStorage | _hjRecordingLastActivity
| This should be found in localStorage or sessionStorage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a visitor recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the visitor performs an action that Hotjar records). This expires when you close your browser. |
| HotJar test cookie | hjTLDTest | When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. This cookie expires when you close your browser. |
| HotJar attributes cookie | _hjUserAttributesHash | User Attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated. This cookie expires when you close your browser. |
| HotJar cached attributes cookie | _hjCachedUserAttributes
| This cookie stores User Attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. These attributes will only be saved if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool. This cookie expires when you close your browser. |
| HotJar local storage test cookie | _hjLocalStorageTest | This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar Tracking Script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted immediately after creating it so the expected storage time is under 100ms. |
Advertising cookies
The North Kesteven District Council website does not have any advertisements, therefore there are no advertising cookies set by this website
Cookies used on other North Kesteven District Council websites
Each of these websites have separate cookie controls and mechanisms.
Cookies used on our 'Forms' website (n-kesteven-ss.achieveservice.com)
Cookies used on Forms website | Cookie | Name(s) | Type | Purpose |
Session
| PHPSESSID
| Necessary
| This cookie is set and used by our 'Forms' package provider, Granicus, it is used to provide the forms functionality. This cookies expires either when you close your browser or in 6 hours. |
Time
| localtime
| Necessary | This cookie is used to calculate the local time. This cookies expires when you close your browser.
|
Language
| APP_LANG
| Necessary | This cookie is used to set the language used to view the site. This cookie is set to expire after 24 hours.
|
Login timestamp
| _lastlogin | Necessary
| This cookie contains a timestamp to determine the time you logged in. This cookies expires when you close your browser.
|
3rd party authentication
| SimpleSAMLSessionID
| Necessary | This cookie is used to authenticate against 3rd party systems. This cookies expires when you close your browser. |
| Customisation | customization
| Necessary | This cookie is used to remember any user customisation. This cookies expires when you close your browser. |
Cookie Message
| COOKIE_MESSAGE
| Performance and Functionality
| This cookie is used to remember cookie settings on this site. This cookie is set to expire after 6 months.
|
Cookies used on our 'Democracy' website (democracy.n-kesteven.gov.uk)
Cookies used on democracy website | Cookie | Name(s) | Type | Purpose |
Session
| ASP.NET_SessionId
| Necessary
| This is a session cookie which identifies you as a unique user whilst browsing this website. This cookie expires when you close your browser. |
