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How we use cookies

Cookie Policy

Last updated: [Date] · Effective from: [Date]

Template content — not yet approved for use. This page is illustrative content prepared for a pre-launch mockup of the babystart® website. It must be reviewed and finalised by a qualified UK solicitor before publishing live, and every bracketed placeholder below must be replaced with babystart's real cookie inventory and policy details.

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, phone or other device when you visit a website. They're widely used to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the website owner. Similar technologies, such as pixels and local storage, work in a similar way and are covered by this policy alongside cookies.

2. The categories of cookies we use

We group the cookies used on our website into four categories, in line with standard industry practice:

Always on

Strictly necessary

Essential for the website to function — for example, remembering the contents of your basket, keeping you logged in, and letting you move between pages securely. The site cannot work properly without these, so they cannot be switched off.

Requires consent

Functional

Remember choices you've made, such as region or previously viewed products, to give you a more personalised experience. Without these, some features may not work as smoothly.

Requires consent

Analytics

Help us understand how visitors use our website — for example, which pages are most popular and whether customers encounter errors — so we can improve the site over time. This data is generally aggregated and does not directly identify you.

Requires consent

Marketing

Used to show you more relevant advertising on our own site and elsewhere, and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. These may be set by us or by third-party advertising partners.

A full list of the specific cookies we use, including their names, purpose and duration, is available in [our on-site cookie preference centre / a detailed cookie table to be inserted here].

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), we need your consent before we can set cookies on your device that are not strictly necessary for the site to function — this covers our functional, analytics and marketing cookies. When you first visit our website, you'll see a cookie banner asking you to accept or reject these non-essential categories, and you can choose which categories to allow.

Strictly necessary cookies do not require consent under PECR, as the site could not function properly without them, but we still tell you about them for transparency.

4. Managing & withdrawing your consent

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by opening our [cookie preference centre / "Manage cookies" link, typically in the site footer], where you can switch individual categories on or off.

You can also control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers let you see what cookies you have and delete them individually, block cookies from particular sites, block third-party cookies, or block all cookies. Bear in mind that blocking strictly necessary cookies may stop parts of our website, such as the basket and checkout, from working correctly. Guidance for popular browsers is usually available from the browser provider's own help pages.

5. Third-party cookies

Some cookies on our site are set by third parties we work with, such as analytics providers and advertising or social media platforms, to help us understand site usage or deliver relevant marketing. These third parties have their own privacy and cookie policies, which we encourage you to review. A list of the specific third-party services currently in use is available in [our cookie preference centre].

6. Changes to this policy

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time, for example when we add or remove cookies, or to reflect changes in the law. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "last updated" date, and where appropriate, we'll ask for your consent again.

7. More information

For more detail on how we handle your personal data more broadly, including data collected through cookies, please see our Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Cookie Policy, please contact us at [Data protection contact email].