Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of text stored on your computer, phone or whatever device you use to surf the Internet. Cookies have many uses, but fundamentally they are used to store information about you on your computer.

We encourage you to accept the cookies our web site uses as they help us to improve the user experience for you and many others.

We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience. We also use log files and Cookies to keep track of your login name, passwords, and the pages you have visited on the site.

Collecting information automatically
In order that we can improve our online services we will collect information about your visits to www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk. These statistics do not contain personal data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

This site uses 'cookies' in order to provide a service to visitors. No personal data is stored in cookies and cookies are not used in order to provide advertising.

Cookies are used for the following purposes:
    1. to allow users to log in to the web site
    2. to check that cookies can be set and therefore determine whether a user is able to log in
    3. to store a reference to form data that is stored on the web server
    4. to collect anonymous statistics relating to site visits
    5. to collect non personal information relating to the site survey
    6. to hold session information for report-it where the client is completing a form (deleted on browser close)

Content management system (the system on which the website is built)
Two cookies are set by this website's  :

Name:
TestCookie
Content:
Determines whether a user's browser accepts cookie and can therefore log in.

Name:
PHPSESSID (ASP.NET_SessionId on .Net systems) -
Content:
Used to store the session id of a user. This is required to determine whether a user is logged in to the web site. Session data is also stored when a user is filling in a form however the data is stored on the server and not in the cookie.

Both of these cookies are required for your site to operate and do not contain personal data. We therefore consider these cookies necessary in order to provide a service to the user as part of which they have requested by using the web site. These cookies are set to expire as soon as a user closes their browser.

Google Analytics
Sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.

Name: _utma
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years

Name: _utmb
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes

Name: _utmz
Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Expires: 6 months

Google cookies are used to store information, such as what time the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before, and what site referred the visitor to the web page. For more details please visit the Google Privacy Centre.

You can also watch a video about Google Analytics Cookies here.

Socitm Web Survey
We run a customer satisfaction survey on our site to collect information on our visitors' experience.  This information is used for reporting purposes and to help us improve the customer experience on our site.

The Socitm Insight Website take-up service uses cookies to determine whether a customer has participated in the survey or has rejected taking part.  The survey uses this information to prevent the same customer using the same user account on the same computer from being asked to participate in the survey again during the current survey year. The cookies are placed from the subscriber's domain and are set to expire one year after placement.

The system uses multiple cookies, all of which only contain a true or false value. In all cases the last character of the cookie name [x] is replaced by the version of the survey, currently 7.

The only use made of Socitm cookies is to prevent customers being invited to participate multiple times in the same survey. They contain no personally identifiable information.

Name:
Socitm_include_me[x]
Content:
indicates that a customer has accepted the survey and is either in the process of completing it or has completed it. The customer will not be asked to participate in this version of the survey again.

Name:
Socitm_exclude_me[x]
Content:
Indicates that a customer has rejected the survey and will not be invited to participate in this version of the survey again until the cookie expires. This cookie is also placed when the system processes the code to invite a customer to participate but detects the socitm_include_me[x] cookie while doing so and does not present the survey again as a result.

Name:
Socitm_exclude_alt[x]
Content:
Indicates that a customer should be excluded from an alternate survey. This cookie is placed when the system processes the code to invite a customer to participate in an alternate/additional survey but detects the socitm_include_me[x] cookie while doing so and does not present the alternate survey as a result. Note this cookie will be placed whether or not the subscriber's implementation includes alternate surveys.

For more details about survey cookies please view the SocITM WTS privacy and cookie policy.

Online Payments - Capita
We use an online payments system on our site so that you can pay County Council bills 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This includes bills or invoices for County Council services.

Current usage:
Version 7 onwards of these products purely use 'session cookies'.  These are necessary for the application to work as they hold information when the user moves between pages.  They do not hold any personally identifiable or sensitive data and are only temporary, and should be deleted by the browser when the user leaves the web-site.

Additional info:
Essentially they hold a 'one-off key' which identifies data held on the server throughout the payment.  Once the payment is complete, the server data linked to the random number no longer exists, regardless of whether the cookie has been deleted or not.  The session cookie is only temporary and should be deleted by the browser when the user leaves the web-site.

Note on session cookie deletion:
The session cookies should be deleted after the session has completed - but some browsers now store these to allow session restore after a browser crash.  This is a configurable option which can be switched off.  However, it should be stressed that the cookies contain no personally identifiable or sensitive data and the related information on the server side will have been deleted.

Twitter
We use Twitter to keep residents of Staffordshire up to date with our latest developments.

Twitter uses cookie technology to collect additional web site usage data and to improve their site and service. They do not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information.  For mroe details please view the Twitter Privacy Policy. 

YouTube
We use YouTube to house our video content, which is then embedded within our site.

YouTube use cookies.  For example, to monitor the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and to monitor visitors and pages viewed.  For more details please view the YouTube Privacy Policy. 

To delete or reject cookies cookies

We recommend you allow the cookies we set by this web site as they help us provide a better service. Disallowing our cookies will affect the functionality this site.

If you do not want to receive cookies from this website, select cookie settings under the privacy settings in your browser options, then add our domain to the list of websites you do not want to accept cookies from. 

To access this using Internet Explorer select the following menu options;
1. Tools   >   2. Internet Options   >   3. Privacy
From here you may also block our site's cookies by selecting the 'sites' button and adding our web address.

Under settings you can also delete individual cookies or any cookies that your browser has stored.

You can find more information on how to delete and control cookies at AboutCookies.org

If you set your browser to refuse cookies, please be aware that there may be functionality on various web sites that does not work.