Council to store more grit

Council bosses in Telford plan to store more salt in a bid to prevent the road chaos seen in the county earlier this year.

Telford & Wrekin Council was forced to slash the number of roads gritted in the borough as supplies of road salt ran out during a heavy cold snap in February.

Gritting lorries were making repeated runs throughout the night as freezing conditions gripped the country.

Telford & Wrekin Council used almost double the amount of salt it would normally use over the winter and the Government was forced to intervene in February to decide how much salt each local authority would receive due to the nationwide shortage.

Now the council has unveiled plans for an extra salt barn at its Granville House depot to store a further 300 tonnes "to help keep the borough's network of key A and B roads and bus and school routes free of ice if future winters are as hard as the last one".

The council maintains normal stock levels of between 1,000 and 1,400 tonnes of salt at the depot.

Councillor Stephen Bentley, cabinet member for environment, said: "Our winter service policy will see us grit the borough's most heavily-used routes and aims to reduce the likelihood of accidents and injury. We undertake a review of the policy before the start of each winter season.

"Last winter's experience shows we need to keep additional stocks of salt and to review gritting routes and priorities should we be faced with national shortages in future."

The council said most schools managed to remain open during the winter, but bus services were affected.

Sylvia Herbert, council spokeswoman, said: "Despite the harsh weather conditions earlier this year, the salting of feeder roads to schools was successful in ensuring that, for the vast majority of the winter, all the schools remained open.

"While main access routes to industrial estates remained clear, the salt shortage had an effect on public transport."

Members of the council's cabinet are being asked to invest an extra £15,000 to build the new barn, which would supply enough grit for seven runs in cases of frost and four in cases of snow, when they meet next week.

In May, it was revealed Shropshire County Council was forced to spend more than £1.2 million extra on keeping the county's roads open during last winter, while, in April, Powys County Council unveiled plans for a new £250,000 depot to store salt in Newtown.

By Jon Ball