What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site, such as the number of visitors. Most major websites use cookies.
Types of cookies used on our website
Our own cookies, as well as third party cookies, are listed below. If you use our website, you agree to our use of cookies.
Strictly necessary cookies
Some cookies on our website are essential for us to be able to provide you with a service you have requested. If you prevent these cookies, via your browser for example, we can’t predict how our website will perform during your visit. Some services may stop working.
'Analytics' cookies
We use analytics cookies to help us understand how users engage with our website. They also allow us to see which features are most popular and make them better, and remove the features that nobody uses. We would find it difficult to analyse how well our website was performing and improve it without these cookies.
These cookies don’t collect any information that could identify you – all the information collected is anonymous and is only used to help us improve how our website works.
We use ‘analytics cookies’ for recording things like:
- the number of visitors to our website
- the type of device used to access our website such as PC, mobile phone or tablets
These are considered non-essential cookies. If you do not accept cookies, these will be disabled.
| The Google Analytics library called analytics.js sets the following cookies: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cookie name | Vendor | Description | Persistency | Function |
| _ga | Google Analytics | Tracking a user’s journey around a website over time. | 2 years | Used to distinguish users |
| _gid | Google Analytics | Enables us to identify which pages are popular, estimate our audience size and usage pattern, and better understand how the website is used. | 24 hours | Used to distinguish users |
| _gat | Google Analytics | This cookie does not store any user information, it’s just used to limit the number of requests that have to be made to doubleclick.net. | 1 minute | Used to throttle request rate. |
| AMP_TOKEN | Google Analytics | Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. | 30 seconds to 1 year | Used to identify if the same user accessed the site from different origins, e.g., they found the site via a Google Search or whether they went to the site directly. |
| _gac_<property-id> | Google Analytics | Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. | 90 days | Analytics writes campaign information to the _gac cookie when a user opens a page on your site via a URL that employs AdWords auto-tagging. |
Third party cookies
Some of the cookies used on our website are stored on your machine by third parties. We have no control over these cookies or how the third parties use them. They are used to allow that third party to provide a service to us, for example maps and photo galleries. For more information on these cookies and how to disable them, please see the third party’s individual privacy policy.
Disable all cookies
For information on how to disable all cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. If you disabled all cookies on our website, some services will not work properly, for example online forms and payments.
More information
Useful information about cookies can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org
If you have a query about our use of cookies, please email webmaster@belfastcity.gov.uk
We may update this policy from time to time. We last changed this policy in September 2018.