Cookies policy for Stansted Airport Info

This is the cookies policy for stanstedairport-info.co.uk, in force from the date in the footer at the top of this page. It sits alongside the privacy policy, which covers the broader data picture, and the legal notice, which covers the rest of the terms. All three are linked from the footer on every page.

The site sets two kinds of cookie. One is analytics, which you can opt out of. The other is strictly necessary and keeps the site running. There are no advertising, marketing or cross-site tracking cookies of any kind.

Analytics: Google Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and judge which pages need work. Google Analytics 4 does not log or store your IP address (it is used briefly to derive a coarse, city-level location, then discarded), advertising features and Google Signals are switched off, and it runs only on the live site, not in development. The product sets two first-party cookies:

The two-year figure is the default maximum. In practice browsers cut it shorter: Google Chrome caps first-party cookies at about 400 days for a visitor who does not return, and Apple Safari can reduce it to as little as 7 days. Because the advertising features are off, the extra cookies Google Analytics can set for Google Ads measurement are not used here. You can opt out of analytics entirely, covered below.

Strictly necessary: Cloudflare

The site is hosted on Cloudflare, so every request passes through Cloudflare's network. Its bot and security layer sets a small number of strictly-necessary cookies to keep the site safe from automated abuse:

Both are first-party, encrypted, and carry no profiling or marketing data. The __cf_bm cookie is the one most visitors will see; cf_clearance appears only after a challenge. Cloudflare's bot platform may set one further strictly-necessary cookie (__cfseq) on the same basis.

No cookie, and no third-party trackers

A few things touch your browser but set no cookie. Google Search Console verification is a single meta tag in the page head: no script, no cookie. The site search runs in your browser (it is powered by Pagefind) and stores nothing. The fonts are self-hosted, so there is no call to a font CDN. There is no Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, X tracking, LinkedIn Insight, TikTok pixel, advertising-network code, social-share widget, or embedded YouTube or Instagram player that would set a cookie. If a future change to the site alters this, the policy is updated in the same commit.

The site sets no cookie that needs opt-in consent, so there is no consent banner. Two legal bases cover everything here, both under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which came into force on 5 February 2026. The amended PECR lists five circumstances in which a site can store or read something on your device without consent, including the two that apply here: strictly necessary and statistical purposes.

The Cloudflare cookies fall under the strictly-necessary exception, because without bot protection at the network layer the site could not stay online safely under automated load. Strictly-necessary cookies have never required consent.

The Google Analytics cookies fall under the newer statistical purposes (analytics) exception. That exception lets a site run analytics used solely for aggregate statistics to improve the service without opt-in consent, on two conditions: the site explains the cookies clearly, which this page does, and it gives you a simple, free way to object, which the next section does. The exception is narrow: it does not cover advertising, profiling, user-level tracking or cross-site tracking, none of which this site does. The Information Commissioner's Office set out the detail in its guidance on the use of storage and access technologies, finalised on 29 April 2026.

A banner asking permission for cookies that already qualify under the exceptions would add a click without adding a real choice. The ICO reads the exceptions narrowly, which cuts both ways: a site cannot stretch the exempt set to dodge consent, and it should not invent a consent step the law does not require.

The analytics run on an opt-out basis, so you can switch them off whenever you like, and the site works normally either way. The quickest way is the switch on this page.

The switch saves a single flag in this browser (it sets no cookie) and takes effect straight away, on this visit and every later one, until you turn it back on or clear this site's data. It only covers this device and browser. For something more durable, or to cover every site at once, you can also opt out at the browser level:

• Block or clear cookies for this site in your browser settings. This removes the Google Analytics cookies and stops them being set again for this site.
• Install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, which stops Google Analytics running on every site you visit, not just this one.
• Use private browsing or a content blocker that prevents the Google Analytics script from loading. No script means no analytics cookie and no measurement.

Blocking cookies will not stop the Cloudflare strictly-necessary cookies doing their job. Clearing them may simply mean Cloudflare shows a one-off verification challenge on your next visit; the site loads as normal once it passes. The major browsers publish their own cookie controls:

• Google Chrome cookie controls
• Apple Safari cookie controls
• Mozilla Firefox cookie controls
• Microsoft Edge cookie controls

For a question about any cookie described here, or anything else in this policy, use the route on the contact page.

The date in the footer is the effective date of this version. The policy is updated whenever the cookies the site actually sets change, for example if Cloudflare introduces or retires a CDN-layer cookie, or whenever the UK legal position moves. The post-2025 regime is recent and the ICO has signalled further guidance, so this page tracks it. The privacy policy covers the wider data picture, and the legal notice covers the terms of use.