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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.

Air handling units


Air Handling Units can be found in both commercial and industrial premises.

Systems that are incorrectly installed or poorly maintained have the potential to cause a statutory nuisance within the local community. For example an extraction and ventilation system in a food premises to remove cooking odours.

We may provide advice to commerce and industry regarding statutory nuisance implications due to such systems and, where the installation requires planning consent, a planning condition may be applied, asking for details of the proposed system.

What can we do

We may assist and advise you during the installation and siting of such systems to minimise statutory nuisance. However, if we receive complaint and establish a business is causing a statutory nuisance; we will endeavour to resolve the matter informally, if this approach fails, we have the legal powers to serve an abatement notice requiring the nuisance to stop.  

What can you do

Your extraction and ventilation system must not cause a noise or odour nuisance in the local community. To minimise the risk of odour nuisance you must ensure your systems are:

  • correctly specified, designed and installed by a competent engineer
  • cleaned and maintained in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations
  • ensure the system meets planning approval if required.


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