If you run a website in the UK, you have seen them everywhere: cookie consent banners asking you to "Accept All" or "Manage Preferences" before you can read a page. They are annoying, they slow down your site, and many small business owners install them because they assume the law requires one.

The truth is more nuanced: UK law does not require a cookie banner for all analytics. It requires consent for cookies that process personal data. If your analytics tool does not use cookies and does not collect personal information, no banner is needed.

When UK law requires a cookie banner

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) — the UK's implementation of the ePrivacy Directive — states that you must obtain consent before storing or accessing any information on a visitor's device, unless the storage is strictly necessary for the service they requested.

You definitely need a banner if:

Your analytics tool sets cookies on visitors' devices
You use tracking pixels, fingerprinting, or localStorage for analytics
You share visitor data with third parties (e.g. advertising networks)

You probably do not need a banner if:

Your analytics tool does not use cookies or client-side storage
It does not collect personal data (IP addresses, unique identifiers)
It runs purely on aggregated, anonymised data

What Google Analytics requires

Google Analytics uses first-party cookies and collects IP addresses. Under UK PECR, this means you need consent before the script runs. Google's own guidance states that you need "a Cookie Consent Solution that obtains the prior consent of users" for analytics cookies.

This is why almost every site using Google Analytics has a cookie banner. It is not optional — it is the legal requirement for that particular tool.

What privacy-focused analytics avoids

Privacy-focused analytics tools — like Plausible, Fathom, and Cloudflare Web Analytics — are designed specifically to avoid the need for consent banners. They achieve this by:

Not setting any cookies on the visitor's device
Not collecting or storing IP addresses
Not using fingerprinting or any client-side storage
Aggregating data server-side rather than tracking individual visitors

Because nothing is stored on the visitor's device, these tools fall outside the consent requirement under PECR. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has confirmed this position: if analytics are "privacy-friendly" and do not involve cookies or similar technologies, consent is not required.

What Web Vitals Collector does

Web Vitals Collector uses Plausible Analytics for its visitor data — a fully cookieless, privacy-first analytics platform. Combined with Core Web Vitals monitoring, you get:

Visitor analytics: Page views, referrers, devices, browsers, countries
Performance monitoring: Real-user LCP, INP, CLS, FCP, TTFB
No cookies set on your visitors' devices whatsoever
No cookie banner required on your website

The analytics script does not store anything on the visitor's device, does not collect IP addresses, and does not share data with third parties. Under UK PECR and GDPR guidance, no consent banner is needed.

What to do if you want to keep your current setup

If you already use Google Analytics and want to keep it, you need a compliant cookie banner. Many providers (Cookiebot, Osano, CookieYes) offer solutions that block analytics scripts until consent is given.

If you want to remove your cookie banner entirely, switch to a privacy-first analytics tool that does not use cookies — and confirm with your legal advisor that the approach meets your specific compliance needs.