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.

Council housing

A new social housing project across the county.

We have not owned any council houses since disposal of our housing stock in 2015.

We are now planning to build 500 affordable houses over a five year period, and are working with T Manners & Sons to do this. The houses will be managed by us. They will be built across the county on land that we already own and will be a mixture of bungalows and houses.

Our standards

Our aim is to provide good quality housing for local people and those in need of housing. The houses will be a sign of quality and sustainability as well as following the government's priority for house building, See our County Durham Housing Strategy for more information.

The way we manage our social housing is overseen by the Government in a series of standards. See Gov.uk: regulatory standards for landlords for more information.

Applying for a home

We hope that the first sites will be finished in early 2026 and will let you know how to apply when they are being built.