Cookie Policy
Effective: September 2026
This Cookie Policy describes the cookies and similar storage and access technologies employed on this Platform, the purpose of each, the lawful basis relied upon, and how you may exercise control over them. It supplements, and should be read with, the Privacy Policy.
1. Definitions
"Cookie" means a small text file placed on your terminal equipment by a website. "Similar technologies" means any other means of storing information on, or gaining access to information stored on, your terminal equipment, including local storage, session storage, indexed databases, pixels, beacons and device fingerprinting. "Strictly necessary" bears the meaning given to it in Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC and in Regulation 6(4) of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. "Consent" bears the meaning given to it in Article 4(11) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679.
2. Lawful basis
Cookies that are strictly necessary for a service you have explicitly requested, and technologies that store only a preference you have expressly set, are exempt from the consent requirement and are placed without it.
Every technology in the table below falls into one of those two classes, so none of them requires your consent. This Platform sets no advertising, analytics or tracking technology, and no identifier that follows you from one visit to the next. We apply this standard to every reader wherever they are, rather than to the readers whose law compels it.
The cookie notice offers two answers, Accept All and Essential Only, and both let you through. At present the two place exactly the storage listed below, because nothing here falls outside the two exempt classes and Essential Only therefore has nothing to clear. Your answer is nonetheless recorded and binds us: nothing requiring consent will be placed unless you have pressed Accept All. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal and you have not answered, we treat it as Essential Only and do not ask.
Over HTTPS, which is how the Platform is served in production, the session, sign-in and view-as cookies carry a __Host- prefix in front of the names shown below. The prefix binds a cookie to this exact host and to the whole site path, and a browser refuses it from anywhere else.
3. Technologies employed
| Identifier | Type | Purpose | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| st_session | First-party cookie | Maintains an authenticated session so that material to which you have been granted access is disclosed to you and to no other person. It holds an opaque identifier and nothing about you. Marked HttpOnly and SameSite. Strictly necessary. | 7 days, or until sign-out |
| st_login | First-party cookie | Holds the state of a sign-in in progress so that the response from the identity provider can be verified as an answer to a request this browser made. Strictly necessary; it is a cross-site request forgery defence. | 15 minutes, or until the sign-in completes |
| st_view_agent | First-party cookie | Records which member an administrator has chosen to view the customer area as. Set only for administrators, and only by their own deliberate selection. Strictly necessary for the administrative function requested. | 7 days |
| st_view_contractor | First-party cookie | As above, for the mechanic area. | 7 days |
| st_consent | First-party cookie | Records your answer to the cookie notice, so that it is honoured and so that you are not asked again. Strictly necessary: without it your answer could not be given effect. | 6 months |
| st.view.* | Local storage | Which reading of a list you last had open, so a section opens where you left it. Set by your own navigation, never transmitted to us, and exempt as a preference you expressly set. | Until you clear your browser storage |
| st.page.* | Local storage | Which page of your own area you were last on, so the area's own address resumes it. Set by your own navigation, never transmitted to us, and exempt on the same basis. | Until you clear your browser storage |
No advertising, analytics or tracking technology operated by any other company is employed on this Platform, and no third party sets any cookie or reads any storage through it.
4. Third-party resources on Platform pages
Some pages load a resource from another company, and your browser contacts that company directly when it does. None of those companies sets a cookie or reads storage through this Platform, but each can see your network address and the fact that your browser asked for the resource. Section 4 of the Privacy Policy names every one of them and says what each receives.
5. Exercising control
The cookie settings button on every page reopens the notice at any time, so changing your answer is a single press, exactly as giving it was. Your answer stands for six months, after which you are asked again.
You may also block or delete cookies for this site in your browser's settings. Because every cookie here is strictly necessary, blocking them has effects: clearing the session cookie signs you out, and blocking it prevents you from signing in at all. The pages you can read without signing in remain readable.
6. What is recorded regardless
Whether or not you have a cookie, our servers keep the ordinary operating and security records of the requests they answer, and the Platform keeps an append-only record of every change made to a record, holding the account that made it, what was changed and when. Neither depends on a cookie, both are held on our own servers, and both are described in Section 2 of the Privacy Policy.