Gritting and roads update – Monday 11 December

Our gritters and snow ploughs have been out across the county since Friday, helping to keep our roads open.

Here’s the latest on the work they’ve been doing, and are continuing to do.

We currently have 14,500 tonnes of salt in stock. We’ve used a total of 2,400 tonnes since the snow started on early Friday morning. At the moment there are no concerns over salt stocks.

We have treated the primary road network 16 to 20 times since Friday, depending on need. We have also completed the secondary network a number of times, again depending on need and availability of resources

The main A and B routes are open and treated accept for: the A488 Hope Valley, due to a fallen tree; and the B4555 Highley New Road. We will get those opened up as soon as we can. We believe there are power cables in the tree on the A488, so we need to wait for WPD to make them safe before we can move the tree.

Secondary routes are all passable with caution. The minor roads will require extreme caution if driving on those.

The farmer/contractors are still out and doing a fantastic job. Without them we would have lost a number of our main routes yesterday.

Today we are concentrating on secondary and minor routes, and the refilling of salt bins.

A particular problem has been the number of trees down. We have had to deal with well over 50, due to the weight of snow on them.

We are getting lots of requests for help in clearing local areas or car parks. Largely we are having to say no, as our resources are fully committed in dealing with the highway network.