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 Plan

The Council Plan is our high-level plan covering three years and is updated annually.

Council Plan 2023 to 2027

In 2019, public, private and voluntary sector bodies that make up the County Durham Partnership jointly agreed a long-term Vision 2035. This vision is based on a strategic assessment of need using our intelligence platform Durham Insight and was developed following extensive consultation with the public. Our Council Plan sets out our contribution to achieving this vision for County Durham as well as our own improvement agenda and major programmes of work that we will be undertaking over the medium term to recover from Covid-19.

The Plan aligns to both our Medium-Term Financial Plan and the County Durham Plan. It sets out:

how we will consider our corporate priorities for improvement.
the key actions we will take to achieve the longer-term ambitions in the Vision 2035.
our own improvement agenda.

The Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) 2023-24 to 2026-27 sets out how our priorities will be resourced and the County Durham Plan is a spatial representation of our ambitions contained within the Council Plan around housing, jobs and the environment until 2035, as well as the transport, schools and healthcare to support it.

Our Council Plan for 2023-2027 was discussed at Cabinet on 8 February 2023 and at the meeting of our full council on 22 February 2023.

Our ambitions within the Plan are structured around five themes for the county council: