The short version
This site sets nothing for analytics or advertising unless you accept it.
Most sites load their tracking immediately and then ask permission afterwards, using a banner that only changes what happens next. We do not do that. Google’s tag is not requested at all until you have made a choice and that choice was to accept. If you decline, or you ignore the banner entirely, the tag is never downloaded and none of the cookies in the analytics or advertising sections below are ever created.
Before you choose, nothing is stored on your device by analytics or advertising. There is one exception, and it only applies if you start filling in our enquiry form: the spam check described under Necessary below begins storing things from that moment, whether or not you have answered this banner. Some of it is a cookie and some of it is browser storage, and all of it is listed below. Simply reading the page sets nothing. After you choose, one small record of your choice is kept, so that we can honour it and stop asking.
Everything this site can keep on your device is listed below, cookie or not. Seven of the things listed are not cookies at all, and they are described in full rather than left out on a technicality.
Your choice is stored on your device, and we never see it
We do not keep a database of who accepted and who declined, and nothing here receives your decision as data or stores it.
Being precise about "stays there", because the honest version is slightly less tidy than the slogan: the record is a cookie, and browsers attach cookies to every request for the site that set them. It therefore travels to our web host alongside each page you ask for. Nothing reads it or keeps it, but it is not sealed on your device, and we would rather say so than claim otherwise.
This has a consequence worth being straight about: if you clear your browser storage, use a different browser, or use a different device, we have no way of knowing what you chose before, and you will be asked again.
Why we ask again after a year, and not sooner
We keep your answer for twelve months, and we keep it for the same twelve months whether you accepted or declined.
That second part is deliberate. It would be easy to store an acceptance for a year and a refusal for six months, and it would mean asking the people who said no twice as often as the people who said yes. Regulators are explicit that repeatedly asking somebody to reconsider because you would prefer a different answer is unfair, and a single interval makes that impossible by construction rather than by promise.
Twelve months is also long enough that an acceptance does not go stale unnoticed. If we change what we are asking about before then, we ask again straight away rather than treating your old answer as covering the new question.
How to change your mind
Use the Cookie preferences link in the footer of any page. You can change any category at any time, and withdrawing is exactly as easy as accepting.
When you withdraw consent we tell Google to stop before we clear anything, and then remove the cookies that were set. Turning a toggle off without deleting the cookies would leave you tracked after you asked us to stop, so we do both, in that order.
Withdrawing stops any further collection. It does not delete the analytics records already collected while your consent was valid, and we would rather say so than let "withdraw" cover more than it does. Google deletes the records tied to your browser's identifier after a set period. It does not take your visit back out of the totals it has already been counted into, and neither can we: those totals carry no identifier for us to search on. Google applies its own thresholds to reports for small numbers of people, precisely so that a report cannot be used to work out who an individual was. If you want the records that do identify your browser gone sooner, ask us: withdrawing removes that identifier from your browser, so you will need to tell us enough for us to find them.
The categories
Necessary. The record of the choice you make here, and the spam check on our enquiry form. Neither is covered by the banner. The first is straightforward; the second is a judgement we have made, and if you would rather not use it, our email address and telephone number are on the contact page.
Analytics. Tells us which pages people read and how they arrived. Used to decide what to write next. Off unless you turn it on.
Advertising. Lets us see which adverts led to an enquiry, so we can stop paying for the ones that do not. Off unless you turn it on.
One thing about those two worth stating rather than leaving you to discover: our analytics account is connected to our Google Ads account, which is how the two are normally set up. It means what analytics records about your visit is visible to us inside the advertising tool even if you have turned advertising off. It also means that what analytics records can be used to build audiences for advertising, which is how a site shows adverts to people who have visited it before. What turning advertising off does is stop everything we set for advertising being put on your device at all, and remove it if it is already there. That is not only the cookies in the advertising table below: it also covers the local storage entry further down this page.
Every cookie, by name
Necessary
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
bc_consent | Bang Creations (this site) | Records the cookie choice you made, and the version of the banner and policy you were shown, so that we can honour it and can ask again if what we are asking about changes | 12 months, whether you accepted or declined |
_GRECAPTCHA | Set by reCAPTCHA when you start filling in the enquiry form, to tell a person apart from an automated submission. Not set if you never use the form | About 6 months, measured rather than published: Google gives no figure for this one |
Analytics, set only if you accept
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_ga | Distinguishes one browser from another so that repeat visits are not counted as new people | 2 years, as published by Google | |
_ga_S4N2X0B50G | Holds the state of the current analytics session for this specific site | 2 years, as published by Google |
Advertising, set only if you accept
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_gcl_au | Links an advert click to an enquiry, so we can tell which adverts work | 90 days, as published by Google | |
_gcl_aw | Holds the identifier from the advert you clicked, so that an enquiry you send later can be matched back to it. Set only if you arrived from a Google advert | 90 days, as published by Google |
About those durations
The durations in the two tables above are the ones Google publishes, and they are the maximum rather than the reality in every browser. Where a duration on this page is not one Google publishes, the cell says so rather than letting it borrow the same authority.
_ga, _ga_S4N2X0B50G, _gcl_au and _gcl_aw are all written by JavaScript rather than by our server. Safari, and any other browser using similar protections, caps how long a cookie written that way can survive, and the cap is considerably shorter than two years. We have quoted the published figure because that is the honest upper bound, but in practice many visitors will find these expire far sooner.
Advert click identifiers, which are not cookies
When you arrive from a Google advert, the advert click carries an identifier in the page address. Because our tag does not load until you have accepted, that identifier would be lost as soon as you clicked through to a second page.
We carry it forward in the browser’s memory for the duration of your visit so that a later enquiry can still be attributed to the advert that brought you. We do not write it to a cookie or to storage, and our copy of it is gone when you close the tab.
One qualification, because that sentence is easy to over-read. To carry the identifier from one page to the next we add it to the web address of the page you are moving to. So it is visible in the address bar and, like every address you visit, it is recorded in your browser’s own history, which belongs to you rather than to us. We attach a short timestamp alongside it, so that an address shared or bookmarked hours later is no longer treated as your advert click.
We describe it here rather than leave it out. The fact that it is not a cookie is a description of how it works, not a claim that different rules apply to it: the law is about storing or reading information on your device by any means, not about cookies specifically. We treat this as part of the advertising purpose, and if you decline advertising it does not become an enquiry we attribute to an advert.
Our own marker in session storage, also not a cookie
If you have accepted analytics or advertising, and you then use the Email us or Call us button on our contact page, we write a small marker to your browser’s session storage.
It does one thing: it remembers that you have already used that button during this visit, so that pressing it twice is not counted as two separate enquiries. It records that a button was used, and nothing else. No address, no number, nothing about you.
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
bc_ev_ | Bang Creations (this site) | Remembers that you have already used the Email us or Call us button during this visit, so one enquiry is not counted as two. One key per button per measurement service, for example bc_ev_email_click_ga4 | Until you close the tab |
It is never written unless you have already accepted analytics or advertising. It is removed when you close the tab, when you withdraw consent, and whenever we ask you to choose again.
Session storage is not a cookie, and it is listed here for the same reason as the advert click identifier above: what matters is that it is information kept on your device, not what the technology is called.
Something else Google stores, which is also not a cookie
If you accept advertising, Google’s own code writes an entry called _gcl_ls into your browser’s local storage. We do not create it and we cannot stop Google creating it while its tag is running, but it is on your device because of a choice you made here, so it is listed here.
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_gcl_ls | Holds the advert click identifier, and an identifier Google uses to join up its own records, so that an enquiry can be matched to the advert that led to it | Until you withdraw consent, or you clear your browser storage. Google publishes no figure for this one |
Local storage is not a cookie and, unlike a cookie, it does not disappear on its own when a browser clears cookies. We remove it when you withdraw consent, and whenever we ask you to choose again, in the same step that removes the cookies above, because clearing your cookies would not.
We list it because it was found by testing what actually ends up on the device rather than by reading what we intended to put there, and the second is not a substitute for the first.
What the spam check leaves behind, which are also not cookies
The _GRECAPTCHA cookie above is not the only thing the spam check puts on your device. When it loads it writes one entry into your browser’s local storage, and when you tick its box it writes three more: two of those in local storage, and one in session storage that lasts only until you close the tab. One of the four sits under our own address; the rest sit under Google’s. We do not create any of them and we cannot stop Google creating them while the check is running, but they are on your device because you started filling in our form, so they are listed here.
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_grecaptcha | Written under our own address when you tick the box. We have not established what it holds | No expiry a browser enforces, and Google publishes no figure | |
rc::a | Written under google.com as soon as the check loads. We have not established what it holds | No expiry a browser enforces, and Google publishes no figure | |
rc::f | Written under google.com when you tick the box. We have not established what it holds | No expiry a browser enforces, and Google publishes no figure | |
rc::b | Written under google.com when you tick the box. We have not established what it holds | Until you close the tab: a property of session storage, not a figure Google publishes |
The purpose column is thinner here than anywhere else on this page, and deliberately. We found these by watching what ends up on the device, Google publishes no account of them that we could find, and we are not going to invent one. What we can tell you is where they are and when they appear.
We do not remove them. Three of them are not ours to remove: no code on this site can reach storage belonging to another site. The fourth, under our own address, we could remove and do not, because the spam check is in the Necessary category, so withdrawing analytics or advertising does not withdraw it. Clearing your browser storage for this site and for google.com removes all four.
Cookies set by other people
We do not embed third-party video, social media widgets, comment systems, chat widgets or advertising networks other than Google’s own measurement described above. If that changes, this page changes with it, and if the change affects what you agreed to we will ask you again rather than assume your earlier answer still stands.
More detail
Our privacy policy covers everything else: what the enquiry form collects, our lawful basis for each use, how long we keep information, who processes it for us, and your rights, including how to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.