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.

Welfare Rights training courses

Our training helps you build skills and knowledge in the social security benefits and tax credits system. The goal of our rights-based training is to improve the financial position of residents by giving advisers the tools to support them to maximise their income.

We deliver a variety of benefit training courses through Advice in County Durham (AiCD). AiCD brings together statutory and voluntary services including all the main advice providers in the county. All our training is free to member organisations of Advice in County Durham.

Before you book

We provide online training, using Microsoft Teams. To attend training you will need to:

use a laptop or desktop computer (not a mobile phone or tablet) with a microphone and video camera/webcam and a broadband internet connection fast enough to videoconference
use Microsoft Teams, either the desktop application or in a web browser
accept the invitation to the Teams meeting and join the meeting by the designated start time
join the meeting with video enabled (your mic should be muted except when speaking)
have an application capable of displaying PDF files (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader)