Cookies Notice

Version 1.0 (draft for trustee approval) · August 2026

This notice explains how cookies and similar technologies are used on our website at inshcommunity.org.uk. It should be read alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains more generally how we handle personal information.

The short version

We do not use cookies to track you, profile you, or advertise to you. We do not use Google Analytics or any other analytics product, and we do not embed social media buttons, advertising pixels, or third-party trackers.

The information stored on your device when you visit our site falls into two groups, and both are there to make the site work rather than to learn anything about you:

a small number of cookies placed automatically by Cloudflare, the service that hosts and protects our website; and
a small amount of information stored by Cloudflare Turnstile, the anti-spam check that runs on our contact and membership forms.

Both are classed as strictly necessary, which means we are permitted to use them without asking your consent. We think you should know they exist anyway, which is why they are set out below.

Because we use nothing that is not strictly necessary, you will not see a cookie consent banner on our site. That is deliberate rather than an oversight. If we ever add something that does require consent, we will ask you first, and we will update this notice.

What cookies are

A cookie is a small text file placed on your device by a website. Cookies allow a site to recognise your device and remember things between page loads or between visits. Similar technologies such as local storage, pixels, and device fingerprinting can be used for comparable purposes, and this notice covers those too.

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR), a website must obtain your consent before storing or accessing information on your device, unless doing so is strictly necessary to provide the service you have asked for.

Cookies currently set on inshcommunity.org.uk

Our website is hosted and protected by Cloudflare, Inc. Cloudflare sets the following cookies as part of delivering the site securely. All are first-party (set under the inshcommunity.org.uk domain), and all are classed by Cloudflare as strictly necessary.

Cookie	Purpose	Expires
`__cf_bm`	Distinguishes human visitors from automated bots, so that malicious traffic can be filtered out before it reaches the site.	30 minutes of inactivity
`cf_clearance`	Records that your browser has passed a security check, so you are not repeatedly challenged. Set only if a challenge is presented to you.	Session / short-lived
`_cfuvid`	Distinguishes individual visitors sharing a single IP address, so that rate limiting is applied fairly. Set only where rate limiting rules apply.	Session
`__cflb`	Keeps your session connected to the same server. Set only where load balancing applies.	Up to 24 hours
`cf_ob_info` `cf_use_ob`	Used by Cloudflare's "Always Online" feature to serve a cached copy of a page if our site is temporarily unavailable.	30 seconds

These cookies contain technical identifiers rather than information about you as a person. They are not used to build a profile of you, are not shared with advertisers, and are not used by us for any purpose beyond keeping the site running and secure.

Cloudflare's own account of these cookies is published at developers.cloudflare.com. Cloudflare processes web traffic data, including IP addresses, as described in section 6 of our Privacy Policy.

Anti-spam protection on our forms

Our contact and membership forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which distinguishes real people from automated scripts without asking you to identify traffic lights or decipher wavy text. Without it, our forms would be filled with automated submissions, and we would lose genuine messages among them.

Turnstile runs inside a self-contained frame served from challenges.cloudflare.com and stores a small amount of information on your device, including a local storage entry named cf.turnstile.u holding a short-lived verification token, together with associated cookies and cached files under the same domain. It loads when the page loads rather than waiting until you begin filling in the form.

Cloudflare states that the signals Turnstile uses, such as IP address, browser user-agent and the site it is protecting, are "strictly necessary for the purpose of detecting and blocking bots", and that "the purpose of collecting these signals is not to identify, profile or target any individuals but solely to detect and block bots". Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy policy is published at cloudflare.com/turnstile-privacy-policy.

We treat Turnstile as strictly necessary because without it we could not offer working contact and membership forms: the service you are asking for when you use those pages.

Other information stored by your browser

Our site also uses ordinary browser storage to hold technical information needed to display pages properly, for example, cached files that allow pages to load faster on a repeat visit. This storage holds site content and technical settings. It does not hold your name, your contact details, or anything you type into our forms.

Nothing you enter into our contact or membership forms is retained in your browser after you submit it. What happens to that information once it reaches us is described in our Privacy Policy.

What we do not use

To be explicit, our website does not use:

Analytics or audience measurement cookies (we do not run Google Analytics or any equivalent)
Advertising, retargeting, or conversion-tracking cookies
Social media sharing buttons or embedded feeds that set cookies
Cross-site tracking of any kind

We hold no cookie-derived information about individual visitors, and there is no visitor-level browsing data for us to disclose, share, or be asked to hand over.

Other websites you may reach from our site

Some links on our site take you to services run by other organisations, for example the Scottish Charity Regulator's register, the Information Commissioner's Office, and the news articles and organisations we link to from our News pages. Once you leave inshcommunity.org.uk, that organisation's own cookies and privacy terms apply, not ours.

How to control cookies

Even though the cookies on our site are strictly necessary, you remain in control of your own browser. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, usually under Privacy or Security. Every major browser also offers a private browsing mode that clears cookies when you close the window.

Blocking the Cloudflare cookies listed above may mean you are challenged more often, or that parts of the site do not load correctly. Nothing on our site requires you to accept cookies to read our content, become a member, or contact us.

Guidance on managing cookies in each browser is available from the browser makers, and general advice for the public is published by the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this notice

If we add anything to the website that sets non-essential cookies, such as analytics, an embedded video, or a mapping widget on our main pages, then we will ask for your consent before it runs, and we will update this notice and its version number. Where we ask for consent, refusing will be as straightforward as agreeing, and you will be able to change your mind at any time.

We will review this notice at least once a year, and whenever we make a significant change to the website.

Contact and complaints

Questions about this notice, or about how we handle your information generally, can be sent to us through our contact page.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.