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.

Open access in County Durham

Extensive areas, mainly in the west of the county, have been designated as Open Access land.

To find out where you can go and what you can do, take a look at the Natural England website. Two guides regarding user rights are also available from Natural England or can be downloaded from this page.

Two leaflets entitled 'Open Access in the North Pennines' and 'Discover Open Country' have been produced by the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), which provide general information about Open Access in the North Pennines area with suggested walks. These leaflets are available from local Tourist Information Centres, the Walks in the countryside web page and the North Pennines AONB or alternatively they can be downloaded from this page.

The areas of Open Access are shown on the newly published Ordnance Survey Explorer series of maps.

The County Durham Local Access Forum advise both the County Council and Natural England on related access issues.