New way to tackle winter gritting (Kirklees Liberal Democrats)

Kirklees Liberal Democrats <info@kirkleeslibdems.org.uk>

New way to tackle winter gritting

August 9, 2006 12:00 AM

Liberal Democrat Councillor Ann Denham is suggesting a new way to tackle winter gritting in a letter to the Head of the Councils Highways department.

Gritters at work

"The Council gritts all the roads in Kirklees once the temperature gets below a certain level" says Councillor Denham. "From October to April they use regular weather forecasts from the Met Office help them to decide when to call out the gritters. If freezing conditions or snow are forecast, the Council grits all of the priority routes within two hours. This means that virtually the whole of the road network gets gritted. The information is not detailed sufficiently for the highways people to decide where to grit so they just do everywhere. It might be freezing over the Pennines and quite mild in Dewsbury Town centre but they get equal treatment which seems to me to be a waste of resources. Surely in this age of information technology the Council can come up with a system that only grits the areas that are really at risk of freezing" says Councillor Denham.

"The money that is saved can then be spent on gritting the footpaths for pedestrians who often are left to struggle on. Many pedestrians slip in the icy conditions and end up in hospital with a broken wrists or worse. This must cost the health and social services a small fortune. With better information used to target resources the Council should be able to spend more on keeping the paths free and end the misery of broken limbs or people locked inside fearful of going out due to the weather."