This line asking me to accept cookies appears at the top of the IOSH forum page. I accept the cookies and then whenever my screen refreshes it reappears and asks for cookies to be accepted AGAIN.

Is that part of some plan to drive people away from the forum?

The EU are the masterminds behind your torture - it is the one way a platform can demonstrate it has sought permission to "track" your activity upon their site.

Even though most internet users know cookies exist, some actually know what they do, and the really skilled can identify types it was determined that concious demonstrable acceptance must be applied.

What is more disturbing is the shift from a generic "all cookies" to selection by type - some publications turn it in to a quest working out which way to flick an ever increasing number of switches in the hope the user gives up and leaves the majority of cookies on.

It does sound as though your browser is dropping cookies during screen refresh - my browser is set to delete history only on exit and not to accept 3rd party

Based on it not happening on my machine I would speculate your own private hell - have your IT department pushed updates, especially your browser?

thanks could be- I don't trust IT people: they are always fiddling with something! 

It happens on my browser.  To be honest, it's among the most innocuous cookie line I've seen - some sites fill a third of the screen with it, or float it over the middle - I just see it as more 'web designer guff' using up screen space - like the IOSH logo, the 'Work 2022' logo, the plain english logo, etc. etc. I'd struggle to descibe it as 'hell'!