Cookie notice
Cookie notice
Last updated: December 2025
What are cookies?
The Permitted website https://www.permitted-developemnt.com uses cookies which are small electronic files of letters and numbers that are transferred to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser. This allows us to recognise your browser and help us to track visitors to our site; enabling us to understand better the products and services that will be most suitable to you.
We use the following types of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies: These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website. These are placed automatically when you first arrive at the site and as you navigate around it, including when you sign into our platform.
- Analytical or performance cookies: These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies: These are used to recognise you when you return to our website and our platform. This enables us to personalise our content for you and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
A cookie can contain your log in details and information to allow us to identify your computer when you travel around our site. This is used for the purpose of helping you access the necessary information to support your application and to improve your user experience.
How we use cookies
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
We do not automatically log or collect data apart from the information you specifically provide to us. For more information on our partner’s privacy and cookie policies, please visit their individual websites.
Third party cookies
Please note that third parties may also use cookies (which are likely to be analytical, performance or targeting cookies) over which we have no control. Some Planning Portal web pages may also contain content from other sites, which may set their own cookies, for example from media and advertising partners that are used to deliver advertising messages that are more relevant to you. Also, if you share a link to a Planning Portal page, the service you share it on may set a cookie on your browser. We have no control over third party cookies – you can turn them off, but not through our website.
On some of our web services we use tracking software, including Google Analytics, to collect and monitor visitor traffic and site usage for the sole purpose of helping us develop and improve the design and layout of the websites. This Information includes:
- number of visitors to the site
- search terms used to find the site
- where visitors to the site have come from
- the pages visited on the website and how long is spent on each web page
- how many times an advert has been displayed and clicked on
These cookies collect information in an anonymous form. Google undertakes that it will not link your IP address with any other data held by Google.
To provide website visitors with the ability to prevent their data from being used by Google Analytics you can download and install the Google Analytics opt-out add-on for your web browser.
The cookies we set
If you create an account with us, then we will use cookies for the managing the sign-up process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases, they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when you have logged out.
We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember you. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when you are logged in to your account.
In order to provide you with a great experience using the Planning Portal we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.
The table below details all the cookies that the Planning Portal uses:
Cookie name | Description |
ai_session | Various cookies used by Microsoft’s Application |
ai_user | Insight activity tracker to record anonymous user activity. |
cookie_preferences | Our own cookie, used to track the user’s cookie preferences. |
_ga _gid _gac_gb | Various tracking cookies for Google Analytics, used to distinguish users or persist session states. If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more. |
__gads _gat_UI NID CONSENT | Various Google Ads cookies used to deliver advertising. |
x-ms-cipm-* [various] | Various Microsoft cookies used to support the secure log-in process, including user authentication. |
Analytics
Microsoft Clarity: We use Clarity in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Clarity is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and do not like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback.
Clarity uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Clarity stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Clarity is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.
Disabling cookies
Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but, if you wish, you can set your browser to prevent it from accepting cookies.
The ‘Help’ option in the menu on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser ‘Help’ for how to do this).
Be aware that disabling cookies can affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies totally will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the Planning Portal. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies unless you have a good understanding of the difference between first and third-party cookies.
For further information about cookies and how to disable them please go to the Information Commissioner’s webpage: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/. This document describes what information the cookies that we use gather, how we use that information and why we sometimes need to store it. You can prevent cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the site’s functionality and may adversely impact your ability to use our services.
For more information about cookies, visit: www.allaboutcookies.org or www.aboutcookies.org By using our websites and agreeing to our Privacy Notice, you expressly consent to the use of cookies as described in this document.
