Find out about changes to our services and Christmas opening times on our Festive information page. To find out when your bin will be collected over the festive period, visit Changes to County Durham bin collections at Christmas.

Due to maintenance, the following systems will be unavailable from 11.45am on Tuesday 24 December until 8.00am on Thursday 2 January: our online Council Tax, business rates and housing benefit services, and our welfare assistance form. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Payments to suppliers over £500

The reports on this page list payments with a value of £500 or over (exclusive of VAT) made to suppliers. The reports are prepared and published 30 days after the end of each month.

Publication of these lists forms part of our commitment to being open and transparent with residents.

This information is included in a report showing all invoice payments over £500 that we have paid during the relevant period. The reports show a number of columns of data which are explained in the table below:

Column	Field name	Explanation
A	Service area	The service area responsible for sending the money
B	Service division	The service division responsible for spending the money
C	Expense type	General heading that describes the type of expenditure
D	Expense code	The code used to identify the service area budget used
E	Detailed expense type	Detailed description of the type of expenditure
F	Payment date	The date on which the payment was made
G	Transaction number	The unique number to identify the transaction within the council's financial management system
H	Amount Exc VAT	Net amount paid to the supplier (that is, excluding recoverable vat)
I	Supplier name	The name of the recipient of the payment

There are a number of exemptions in the data provided. These include non-commercial payments to specific individuals which cannot be disclosed as they are covered by Data Protection Act requirements. Staff and pensions information is also not included.

We hold the current year plus the last three years on our website. The reports below are available in comma separated variable (CSV) format.