Cookie Policy

1. What cookies are

Cookies are small files placed on your device by a website. Their purpose is to let the site remember something between one page and the next.

The word “cookies” here is shorthand. It includes local storage, session storage and tracking pixels, which raise the same questions.

A cookie cannot read files on your device, and it cannot carry a virus. What it can do is record that a particular browser was here before.

2. How we use cookies

We use a small number of cookies on heritagelane.co.uk. The essential ones cannot be switched off; nothing else runs until you allow it.

We do not treat silence as agreement. Optional cookies remain unset until you actively accept them.

Declining optional cookies does not reduce the content available to you. The site is fully usable either way.

3. Categories of cookie we use

Strictly necessary. Without these the site cannot function. They hold your session, store the cookie decision itself, and underpin request-forgery protection. They are set on the basis of legitimate interest and cannot be turned off within the site.

Functional. These remember preferences you have expressed — a language, a display setting — so that the site behaves consistently on your next visit. They are optional.

Analytics. These count visits and record which pages are read, in aggregate. They tell us that a page is unpopular; they do not tell us who found it dull. They are optional and are only set with consent.

Marketing. If present, these relate to campaign measurement. They are off unless you turn them on.

4. Cookies set by third parties

Some cookies may be set by services we embed rather than by us directly. Where that happens, the provider is also responsible for what it stores.

The fewer third-party components a page loads, the fewer parties receive data about you. We treat that as a design constraint rather than an afterthought.

Where a third-party cookie is set, it is disclosed in the consent interface before it is placed, not afterwards.

5. How long cookies last

Cookies fall into two groups by lifespan:

• Session cookies are erased when you close the browser. They exist only for the visit.
• Persistent cookies remain for a set period so a preference survives between visits.

We set the shortest lifespan that still serves the purpose. A record of your cookie choice is kept long enough that you are not asked repeatedly, which would be its own kind of nuisance.

6. Managing your preferences

You can change your decision at any time, and withdrawing consent is as straightforward as giving it.

Your browser also gives you direct control, independently of any site:

• block all cookies, or block only third-party cookies
• delete cookies already stored, individually or in bulk
• be prompted before any cookie is set
• clear cookies automatically each time the browser closes

The relevant setting is usually under Privacy or Security in your browser's preferences. Blocking strictly necessary cookies will stop parts of most sites from working, including this one.

7. Cookies and personal data

A cookie identifier is personal data when it can single out a browser, even if we never learn a name behind it. We treat identifiers on that basis rather than arguing about the label.

This means the rights described in our privacy policy — access, erasure, objection — apply to cookie data as much as to anything you typed into a form.

What we actually read is aggregate: page counts and navigation paths. An individual visitor's trail is not something we go looking for.

8. Records of consent

Your decision is stored together with its date. Without that record we could neither respect the choice nor demonstrate that it was given.

The record contains the choice itself and a timestamp. It does not contain a name, an email address, or anything that identifies you outside this browser.

If you clear site data, the record goes with it and you will be asked once more — not out of persistence, but because the answer is genuinely gone.

9. Do Not Track and global signals

Browsers may send a Do Not Track header or a similar opt-out signal. There is no settled standard for how sites must respond to it.

As we do not run cross-site tracking, such a signal changes little in our case — the behaviour it targets is already absent.

10. Changes to this policy

If the cookies we use change, this page changes with them, and the date at the foot is updated.

Where a change means new optional cookies, consent is asked for again rather than carried over from the old set.

11. Contact

Questions about this document, or a request concerning your data, can be sent to the address below. We answer written enquiries in the order received and aim to reply within one calendar month.

HeritageLane
725 South Street
E00 2AB Crawley
United Kingdom
[email protected]
+44 020 5123 5932