Cookies notice

The GCS website (gcs.civilservice.gov.uk) puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again

You can find out more about how to manage cookies, including how to delete and block them, on the Information Commission Officer’s (ICO) website.

How cookies are used on the GCS website

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use this site. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

the pages you visit on the site
how long you spend on each page
how you got to the site
what you click on while you’re visiting the site

It doesn’t collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Name	Expires
_ga	2 years
_gat	10 minutes
_gid	24 hours

You may opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Our introductory cookie message

When you first visit this website you should see a pop-up message to inform you that the site uses cookies and to request your permission to set analytical cookies. We’ll store a cookie so that your computer knows you’ve seen it and knows not to show it again.

Name	Expires
CookieControl	3 months

Site registration

When you register as a member or an affiliate on the GCS website we set the following cookies to recognise you when you’re logged in and to protect against third party websites making requests to modify data on our site.

Name	Expires
laravel_session	2 hours
XSRF-TOKEN	2 hours

YouTube videos

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.

Name	Expires
GPS	30 minutes
PREF	2 years
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	9 months
YSC	When you close your browser
remote_sid	When you close your browser

Read YouTube’s Privacy Policy.

Date last modified: 10th December 2019