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.

Online payments with eStore

eStore is your way to make payments for council goods and services online. Find out more about the system and the advantages of registering for an account below.

What can you use it for?

You can make the following payments - with more following soon:

Council tax payments
Council invoice payments
Housing benefit overpayments
Blue Badge payments
Business rate payments
Business Improvement District (BID) payments
Pay fines / Fixed Penalty Notices issued for things like littering, flytipping and dog fouling.

You can pay/appeal against a parking fine through our separate online parking system.

Benefits of setting up an account

If you make regular online payments register for our eStore. It's quicker and more secure than entering your payment details each time.

You can continue to make individual payments without setting up an account, but if you make regular payments, for example if you pay your council tax online each month, setting up an account will make it:

quicker to make these payments
more secure as you don't have to enter your payment details each time you come to pay
easier to check past payments as you can keep a check on your payment history