Cookies and privacy at Leeds City Council

Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. Without them the website thinks you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page.

We also use them to collect anonymous statistics about how people use the site, and to help us make it as easy for you to use as we can.

A cookie is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website's server. Only that server can retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. So if we put a cookie on your computer, it can't be read by any other website.

There are two types of cookie:

Session cookies automatically delete when you close your browser or after a few minutes if you have left the site open without using it. They mean you don't have to keep re-submitting information as you move through the site or carry out transactions.

Persistent cookies remember information from previous visits and are kept when the web browser is closed. They may be used for remembering any setting you have changed or analysing website traffic.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website; if you continue without changing your cookie settings we assume that you are happy with our use of cookies. However, you can change your cookie settings at any time.

You can set your computer to accept all cookies, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. You can also see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them. The way in which you do this depends upon the web browser which you use. Go to www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org to find out more.

For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.

Find out more about information Leeds City Council may collect about you from our privacy notice.

Cookies that we use on leeds.gov.uk

1. Cookies strictly necessary for the site to function

These cookies are essential to providing the specific service requested and as such do not need consent from the site user. These may be part of how the web site is constructed and are often automatically generated. Generally these only exist while the web browser is open (called a session). They are not used to collect any information about the individual.

2. Cookies that help us improve the performance of our sites

We collect anonymous web statistics from our website to help us understand how many people access it, how it is used, and to help us improve the user experience of our website. We use Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) to do this. They store several cookies on users' computers or mobiles which are used to collect information to analyse which parts of the site are most useful to our visitors and to help us find and . We also use this kind of cookie to track errors and missing files. The information is used only for web analytics and no personal details are stored.

The information we collect includes the:

• name of your internet service provider and the internet protocol (IP) address you are using. This may or may not identify a specific computer
• date and time you visit our website, and the pages you look at
• internet address of any websites which have linked you directly to our site

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

For more information visit Google's privacy and terms

3. Cookies needed to improve the functionality of our sites

These cookies are used to allow the web site to remember choices the visitor makes. This may be to personalise information or remember settings like text size or background colours. These cookies however actually only identify the device and not an individual.

YouTube cookie (VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE): tracks YouTube video views data, it is only used in aggregate.

Google cookie (PREF): records preferences for various services on Google.