Privacy Policy

Blackpool Council respects your privacy as a user of its website and this page explains how Blackpool Council uses any information you give us.

Data Protection

Any information you supply to the Council voluntarily will be treated in line with the provisions of the current Data Protection Act and related legislation.

The information you supply may include your name, address and email address and may be collected when you request a service from the Council, submit an email or feedback, or make or receive electronic payments. We will not collect personal information without your knowledge.

This information will be used by Blackpool Council for a known purpose and will not be passed to outside organisations, agencies or individuals without your knowledge. But, you should note that specific information would be released if required by law.

Online Forms

Blackpool Council's online forms also use cookies to collect personal information when you pay for a service.

Internet payments are taken from a secure website with full encryption over the Internet. However, you should be aware that the Internet is not a fully secure facility. Any payment details you provide to Blackpool Council will be kept secure and will not be stored on a web server.

If you complete one of our forms, we will only use the information for the purpose for which you provide it. We will not use the personal information you give us for marketing purposes without asking you.

If you discover any information on our website pages that you believe to be inaccurate or inappropriate, or would like further information about these statements, please email website.page@blackpool.gov.uk

What information do we collect?

Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of text stored on your computer, phone or whatever you use to surf the Internet. Cookies have many uses, but fundamentally they are used to store information about you on your computer. We encourage you to accept the cookies our website uses as they help us to improve the user experience for you and many others.

When you visit our website, a cookie is set to indicate that you agree to the usage of cookies for this website. If you do not wish to allow use of cookies for our website, you can block them using your browser preferences.

The cookies we use are:

First Party Cookies

Favourites Control

Name: [ID of Control]_Favourites
Typical Content: Stores favourites which have been selected by the user
Expires: Until the user clears cookies

Font Size Selector

Name: CMSFontSizeCookie
Typical Content: Stores your current font size selection
Expires: 12 months

Stylesheet Switcher

Name: CMSStylesheetCookie
Typical Content: Stores the user's current stylesheet selection
Expires: 12 months

Session cookies 

These are used for remembering your selections during your visit to our site. A typical scenario may be to remember information entered in a form when navigating to different pages. We use the following cookies for session information.

Name: csession
Typical Content: Randomly generated session ID
Expires: When the user exits the browser

Name: ASP.NET_SessionId
Typical Content: randomly generated session ID
Expires: When the user exits the browser

Google Analytics

These cookies are used to help record your use of the website. They are used to collect statistics about site usage such as when you last visited the site and how long your visit lasted. This information is then used to improve the user experience on our website

These cookies contain no personal information and are used only for web analytics.

They are called:

Name: _utma
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years

Name:_utmb
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes

Name: _utmc
Typical Content: randomly generated number
Expires: when the user exits the browser

Name:_utmz
Typical Content: randomly generated number, plus information on how the site was reached (for example, directly, via a link or through organic search)
Expires: 6 months

Third Party Cookies

From time to time our site uses a number of third party elements to enhance the user experience or allow you to share information. These include the use of videos or maps and the ability to share content with other users. The following third party cookies may be placed on your device.

Google

Name: PREF 
Typical Content: This is used for preferences for various services on Google 
Expires: 730 days.

Name: NID 
Typical Content: This is a unique identifier given to allow traffic analysis to Google Maps. Data is only used in aggregate 
Expires: 183 days

Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE 
Typical Content: This is a unique identifier given to allow tracking of YouTube video views. Data is only used in aggregate 
Expires: 240 days

Twitter

We use a Twitter widget on our home page and this may store the following cookies on your device: pid, k, guest_id, _twitter_sess. These store log data, including the web page you visited and a cookie that identifies your browser and are usually stored for a maximum of 10 days.

AddThis

AddThis allow users to share content via Social Networking websites and email. When we provide links to third party services you find useful, they may place a cookie on your device to make their service easier to use. They are called SSC, SSH and SSHS.These cookies are used in recording user sharing and social activity and for optimising sharing settings for the user and will expire after 18 months. AddThis provide more information on their use of cookies

Delete or reject cookies

We recommend you allow cookies we set by this website as they help us provide a better service.

If you do not want to receive cookies from this website, select cookie settings under the privacy settings in your browser options, then add our domain to the list of websites you do not want to accept cookies from.

Under settings you can also delete individual cookies or any cookies that your browser has stored.

You can opt out of receiving Google Analytics cookies by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on

You can find more information on how to delete and control cookies on the All about cookies website. If you set your browser to refuse cookies, please be aware that there may be functionality on various websites that do not work.