What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used 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 in tables within the next sections.
Strictly necessary cookies
Some cookies on our website are essential for us so we can 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.
We use 'strictly necessary' cookies for things like our cookie banner, to remember your preference.
'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 to 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.
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.
List of our cookies
Strictly necessary cookies
| Cookie | Name | What does this do? |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie preference | CookieControl | |
| ASP session cookie | ASP.NET_SessionId | This session cookie is used by our server and is required so that our web pages function properly. It will expire when the browser is closed. |
Analytics cookies
| Cookie | Name | What does this do? | More information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | ga _ga_<container-id> |
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to analyse site usage, compile reports and help us to improve the site. The cookies collect information such as the number of visitors to the site and the pages they visited. | View Google Analytics privacy policy. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout |
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.
For more information on these cookies and how to disable them, see the third party's individual privacy policy.
| Cookie | About the cookie | Name | More information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reachdeck |
Reachdeck is an accessibility and reading support add-on that helps you to read the content. Examples of preferences include colour choices, translation language choices, or screen mask configuration. Look at the ReachDeck user settings panel to see all the different types of information. ReachDeck also continues to use anonymised Google Analytics to collect general usage statistics to help us improve ReachDeck in future releases. This usage is considered to be a Tracking Cookie under EU Cookie Law, and it is important that users are able to opt out of this. IP Anonymisation is used to ensure that both Google and Texthelp cannot identify individual users. ReachDeck does not log any personally identifiable information in these Analytics. |
Read more about Reachdeck’s cookies. | |
| Google Maps | We place Google Maps around the site to help people find a venue or service. | JSESSIONID PREF NID KHCOOKIE SNID B |
View Google privacy policy |
| YouTube | We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. To find out more, visit YouTube's embedding videos information page. | View YouTube (Google) privacy policy |
Disable all cookies
For information on how to disable all cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org (link opens in new window). If you disabled all cookies on our website, some services will not work properly.
More information
Useful information about cookies can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org (link opens in new window).
If you have a query about our use of cookies, email webmaster@belfastcity.gov.uk.
We may update this policy from time to time. We last changed this policy on 18 April 2024.