Why updated pages are not always displayed in your browser

In order to speed up web browsing, web browsers implement a technology called internet caching. Pages that have already been visited are stored locally i.e. on the user's hard disk (computer).

When a page is requested the browser checks to see if that page has been visited recently and whether a copy of the page is available on the user's computer. If a copy of the page is available on the user's computer then that is the page that will be displayed and NOT the page from the web site.

This speeds up web access since a web page that has recently been visited doesn't have to be downloaded from the web site every time it is visited. However,  occasionally  updated pages (most recent) will not be displayed in the browser.

This is an issue that affects all web sites and is a consequence of trying to speed up access to the web for people with slow modems.

We know from our correspondence that some of our visitors to this site have been experiencing this problem and we advise our visitors to press the refresh button on their browser if problems are experienced. Pressing the refresh button forces the browser to reload the  page from the web site.