Cookies

Cookies
policy

This page lists every cookie that mylocalawards.co.uk sets, what each one does and how long it stays on your device. It is written by the people who run the site, from the software itself, and it changes whenever the cookies do. The site is run by Marketic Group Ltd, trading as My Local Awards. Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal data more generally.

Last updated: 3 September 2026

Your answer

You have not answered yet, so optional cookies are off.

Your browser keeps your answer for six months. Change it here whenever you like. If you switch to essentials only, we delete the optional cookies already on this browser as well as setting no more.

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to keep, so the site can recognise the same browser on its next request. Some are needed for a site to work at all. Others are optional, and the law in the UK (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, alongside UK GDPR) says we have to ask before setting those.

Cookies the site needs

These are set without asking, because the site does not work properly without them. None of them tracks you, and none is shared with anybody else.

  • sponsorship_received

    Shows the confirmation after a sponsorship enquiry, without resending the form on refresh. Contains no contact details.

    Set by My Local Awards. Lasts 2 minutes, or until the confirmation is shown.

  • awards_cookie_consent

    Remembers the answer you gave to our cookie question, so we do not ask you again on every page.

    Set by My Local Awards. Lasts 6 months.

  • awards_csrf

    A security token that checks a vote, a nomination, a sponsorship enquiry or an acceptance really came from this site and not from a form somewhere else. Set when you open one of those pages.

    Set by My Local Awards. Lasts 4 hours.

On the live site the security cookie is named with a __Host- prefix, which is a browser rule that stops any other site pretending to be us. It is the same cookie.

  • Staff sign-in cookies

    awards_admin_session, awards_admin_csrf, awards_admin_webauthn, awards_admin_enrolment

    Only ever set for members of our own team signing in to run the awards. A visitor never receives them.

    Set by My Local Awards. Lasts up to 8 hours.

Cookies you can choose

Optional cookies help us understand how the site is used, so we can make it better. They are set only if you accept them on the banner. If you have not answered, or you chose essentials only, none of them is set and nothing behind them loads. Change your mind later and we delete the ones already there, on the spot.

At the moment the optional cookies on this site come from Google Analytics, which we use to see which pages get read, which regions people look at, and where somebody gives up on a form. If we add others, they will be listed here and the banner will ask you again.

  • _ga

    Tells Google Analytics that two page views came from the same browser, using a random number rather than anything about you.

    Set by Google. Lasts 2 years.

  • _ga_ followed by our property ID

    Keeps track of a single visit: which pages, in what order, and for how long.

    Set by Google. Lasts 2 years.

What Google Analytics sees, and what it does not

  • The pages you open, how you arrived, the kind of device and browser you use, and how long you stay.
  • Your IP address, which Google uses to work out roughly where you are (the country and region) and then discards. It is not stored.
  • Not your name, your email address, your mobile number, who you voted for, or anything you type into a form. None of that is sent to Google.
  • We do count votes as they happen, so we can see how many people who start voting finish. That count records the region and nothing else. It never carries the business you voted for, and the page address is replaced before it is sent so that it cannot be worked out from there either.
  • We have switched off Google's advertising features, so nothing from this site is used to build an advertising profile of you, and we have asked Google not to link your visit to a Google account.
  • Google processes this data on our behalf and may do so on servers outside the UK, under the safeguards described in our privacy policy. Google's own privacy policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.

Other services that see your visit

Two other companies receive requests from your browser when you use this site, and neither sets a cookie on it.

  • Google Fonts. The typefaces on this site are loaded from Google's servers, so your browser sends its IP address there when a page loads, as it does to any server it fetches a file from. No cookie is set and no analytics runs from it.
  • Stripe. If a winning business buys one of our optional packages, payment happens on Stripe's own website, which uses cookies of its own under Stripe's cookie policy. Nothing about payment happens on this site.

Managing cookies in your browser

Every browser lets you see, block and delete cookies through its settings, usually under privacy. If you block the cookies this site needs, you will not be able to vote or nominate, because we will have no way to tell your form from a forged one. Deleting the consent cookie simply means the banner asks you again. A plain guide to cookie settings in each browser is at allaboutcookies.org.

Changes to this policy

We update this page whenever the cookies we use change, and revise the date at the top. If a change would affect the answer you gave, the banner asks you again rather than assuming.

Contact

Questions about cookies, or about your data more generally: support@mylocalawards.co.uk.

Related

See also our Privacy policy, which covers everything we do with personal data, and our Terms & Conditions, which set out the rules for nominations, voting and winners.