How we use cookies

We want to make services we deliver on the internet easy, and our content richer and relevant. This sometimes involves placing cookies on your computer or mobile device.

Cookies are simple pieces of data stored on your hard drive. They are safe as they cannot be used to spread viruses. Cookies we use cannot be used to identify you personally as no personal information such as telephone numbers or email addresses is in these cookies.

Cookies used on our website

Operational cookies

These cookies expire as soon as a user quits their browser.

These cookies are necessary for our site to operate and do not contain personal data. We consider these cookies necessary to provide a service to the user.

  • __cfduid checks visitors are genuine for security purposes.
  • CookieControl remembers your cookie settings
  • PHPSESSID stores the session id of a user. This determines whether a user is logged in to our website. Session data is also stored when a user is filling in a form, but the data is stored on the server and not in the cookie

Operational cookies for logging in

The following session cookies are only used for users that authenticate (log in) to edinburgh.gov.uk  and are automatically destroyed when the browser is closed.

These cookies are necessary for our site to operate and do not contain personal data. These cookies are essential to let you log in to the site.

  • IV_JCT maintains state during authentication
  • edi_sms is used for presentation purposes only, to tell that a user has logged on
  • AMWEBJCT!%2Fsps!JSESSIONID maintains state during authentication
  • AMWEBJCT!%2FCAS!JSESSIONID maintains state during authentication
  • AMWEBJCT!%2FCAS!FIM_IVTAPP_TARGET maintains state during authentication
  • AMWEBJCT!%2FCAS!https%3A%2F%2Fauth.edinburgh.gov.uk%2Fsps%2FCAS%2Fsaml20FIMSAML20 maintains state during authentication

The following cookie is set to expire after 1 hour

  • edi_redirect - preserves the original requested url during authentication with MyGovScot myaccount. 

Usage and analytics cookies

We use Google Analytics to collect statistical data about our visitors. We collect this information in a way that does not identify you and the data is not shared with anybody else.

  • _ga expires after 2 years and is used to distinguish users.
  • _gid expires after 24 hours and is used to distinguish users.
  • _gat expires after 1 minute and is used to throttle request rate.

Information on how to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites and Google's use of cookies can be found on Google Analytics Opt-out and Google privacy pages.

Embedded content and social media cookies

The Council website may contain an embedded content and social media third-party cookies.

Cookies placed on your computer or mobile device from a third party are not related to edinburgh.gov.uk. The Council does not control how a third party uses their cookies. Please check third party websites' privacy policies.

Our site has a number of pages with embedded videos or other content that utilise cookies from a third party to enable this.

Deleting cookies

You can delete cookies from your device and change cookies setting in your browser How to delete cookies.