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)

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.

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.

Last Updated: 25/03/2021