Skip to content
  1. Do it online
  2. Login
  3. Have your say
  4. My Durham

Due to essential maintenance, the following systems will be unavailable from 6.00pm on Monday 2 October until 8.00am on Tuesday 3 October: our online council tax, business rates and housing benefit services, and our welfare assistance form. You will also not be able to register to pay council tax online, make a change of address for council tax or cancel single person discount. You are still able to make a payment during this time. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Council structure


We provide the majority of council services in County Durham. Find out more information about us and the services we deliver.

To deliver our services, there are six directorates:

Our services range from teaching young people to caring for our older residents, from lending the latest best sellers to protecting 900-year-old documents' from fixing road bridges to creating bridges in our communities, from helping children to swim to helping adults into work, from planting trees in nature reserves to recycling paper from our homes. In fact, any local service you can think of, we probably have a hand in it somewhere.

We have a budget of around £1.3billion, which helps us provide services for more than 513,000 people. We have over 18,000 staff, 39 libraries, 15 leisure centres, six swimming pools, 15 family hubs, 78,000 street lights and 262 schools.

Management structure

Our senior management team is:

  • John Hewitt - Chief Executive
    • Jane Robinson - Corporate Director of Adult and Health Services
    • John Pearce - Corporate Director of Children and Young People's Services
    • Alan Patrickson - Corporate Director of Neighbourhoods and Climate Change
    • Amy Harhoff - Corporate Director of Regeneration, Economy and Growth
    • Paul Darby - Corporate Director of Resources