Cookies Policy
Cookies are small files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
Our website uses cookies to give you the best possible experience and enable the use of certain functions (such as shopping online).
Cookies save some information about you when you use the website. They do not usually identify you directly, just the device you use.
About cookies
We use cookies to improve services for you, such as:
- Enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during a task
- Recognising that you may already have given a username and password, so you don't need to do it for every web page requesting those details
- Measuring how many people are using services, to ensure they have enough capacity to be fast and can be made easier to use
How to manage cookies on your computer
You can manage these small files yourself using your web browser settings. Use the 'help' function in your browser to find out more about managing your cookie settings.
The About Cookies website has more information about cookies and instructions for managing and deleting cookies in different browsers.
Restricting cookies may affect the functionality of the Historic England website.
Necessary cookies
Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management and accessibility. We do not need to ask permission to use them.
Name | Purpose | Expires |
ASP.NET_SessionId | Used to maintain anonymous user sessions by the server. | When you close the browser |
UMB_UCONTEXT_MEM BER | Stores reference to the currently logged-in user | 30 minutes |
__cfduid | Used to detect malicious visitors and minimise blocking legitimate users | 30 days |
ai_user | Unique anonymous session identifier cookie | 1 year |
ai_session | Unique user identifier cookie enabling counting of the number of users accessing the application over time | When you close the browser |
CookieControl | Used to remember the user’s consent preferences | 3 months |
Analytics cookies (optional)
With your permission, we use Google Analytics to collect data about how you use Historic England websites. This information helps us to improve our service.
Google is not allowed to use or share our analytics data with anyone.
Google Analytics stores anonymised information about:
- How you arrived to the website
- The pages you visit and how long you spend on them
- Any errors you see while using our site
Name | Purpose | Expires |
_ga | Checks if you’ve visited our website before. This helps us count how many people visit our site | 2 years |
_gid | Checks if you’ve visited our website before. This helps us count how many people visit our site | 24 hours |
_gat* | Set by Google Tag Manager to limit the number of requests made to doubleclick.net | 1 minute |
Marketing cookies (optional)
With your permission, we use Marketing cookies to help us improve the relevancy of advertising campaigns you receive.
Name | Purpose | Expires |
_gs | Used to identify the user’s browser, operating system, IP address and the page on the website they are viewing | 1 hour |
_gu | Used to distinguish users | 1 year |
_gw | Records widgets previously displayed to the user | 1 year |
Third party cookies
We may embed features from other websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps, to make it easy for you to use and share our website.
Browsing the Historic England website may place cookies from social media tools or other external applications on your computer.
Historic England has no control over these cookies, or when they may change, so we cannot provide a list of them. You should check with the third party websites for more information.
YouTube sets cookies on some of our pages. Please note YouTube videos will be disabled if this setting is switched to 'off'.