Privacy and usage counting

We count how our pages and tools are used so we can improve them. Our own site receives these counts. No advertising or third-party analytics service receives them.

What we count

Counts cover page types, referral categories, calculator steps, reading depth, visible time, links, validation failures and page performance. Phone, tablet and desktop are broad screen categories. We group signals into daily counters, with hourly totals kept separately.

What we leave out

Usage counting does not collect names, email addresses, IP addresses, visitor identifiers, exact locations, fingerprints, calculator values, results, search words or contact messages. It does not collect full URLs, query strings, selected text or error messages. Article, employer and constituency identifiers are replaced by fixed page-type labels.

No analytics cookies are used. A few temporary flags in your browser tab prevent repeated visit counts and count journeys into calculators. They expire after 30 minutes of inactivity; calculator journey flags expire after two minutes. They contain fixed categories and no visitor identifier. Only your counting preference is saved between visits.

Switch counting off

We respect Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control where your browser sends them.

You can switch counting off in this browser. Calculators and the site keep working.

How long counts are kept

Traffic totals are kept for 400 days. Detailed usage counts, hourly totals and the collection allowance are kept for 35 days. Counts are visible only in our protected reporting area.

Calculator values are sent to this site to produce your result, separately from usage counting. Contact messages are sent when you submit the contact form; they are never copied into telemetry.