Cookies

01 What a cookie is

A cookie is a small file that a website asks your browser to keep, so that it can recognise your device the next time it sees it. Several other technologies do the same job by different means: localStorage and sessionStorage, tracking pixels, device fingerprinting, and the code hidden inside embedded content such as maps, videos and social media feeds.

UK law treats them all together, because they all involve either storing information on your device or reading information that is already there.

02 What this site does not use

This website is a set of plain files: HTML pages, one stylesheet, one small JavaScript file, some images and the fonts, all served from our own server. Specifically, there is no:

• cookie of any kind, including the ones often described as essential, functional or session cookies
• localStorage, sessionStorage or IndexedDB use
• analytics of any sort, from any provider, including Google Analytics
• advertising, remarketing or conversion tracking pixel
• embedded map, video player, social media feed or comment system
• content delivery network, external font service or externally hosted script: the fonts sit on our server rather than Google’s
• login, account, basket or contact form, so there is no session to remember

The one small JavaScript file on the site opens the mobile menu, plays some gentle reveal animations and opens the questions on the home page. It sends nothing anywhere and stores nothing. Everything on the site can be read with JavaScript switched off.

03 What does happen

Two things, and neither of them is a cookie.

Your browser caches files

Your browser keeps its own copy of images, fonts and stylesheets so that the next page loads faster. That is your browser’s normal behaviour rather than something we set, it holds no information about you, and you can clear it whenever you like from your browser settings.

The server writes an access log

When the server sends you a file it writes a line in its log: the IP address, the time, what was requested and which browser asked for it. That happens on our side, not on your device, so it is not a cookie and no consent is required for it. What it is used for is set out in the privacy notice.

04 Why there is no banner

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, usually called PECR, say that a website must tell you about, and get your consent for, storing information on your device or gaining access to information already stored there, unless doing so is strictly necessary to provide the service you have asked for.

We store nothing and we access nothing. No consent is therefore required, and asking you to click “accept” would be theatre. Consent banners exist because websites want to follow people around. This one does not.

05 When you leave this site

Tapping the call, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook or Food Standards Agency links takes you off this website and onto somebody else’s. Those services do use cookies and similar technologies, under their own terms, and we have no control or visibility over what they set. If you would rather avoid that, ring us or send an email instead.

06 If this ever changes

If we ever add something that stores information on your device, for example an enquiry form that remembers what you typed, an online booking system, an embedded map or any form of analytics, we will update this page and the privacy notice first. Where the law requires consent, we will ask for it before anything is stored, and saying no will be as easy as saying yes.

07 Questions

If you want to check any of this, or you think you have found something on the site that contradicts it, please tell us. We would want to know.

Related pages: privacy notice, terms and accessibility.