OnlineFOCUS reader Robin has just tipped us off to the following on the BBC website:
Two councils running low on salt
Two local authorities have announced they are starting to run out of salt to grit roads.
Essex County Council and Cumbria County Council have revealed they will not be able to grit some minor roads.
Essex council said all A roads would continue to be treated, along with some B roads and access roads to hospitals…
The full report is here
Is this connected in any way with what the County Council did to it’s road salting budget back in 2003?
This was right back at the start of onlineFOCUS in July 2003 , when we wrote that:
July 12th, 2003 |
Shock Cuts in Winter Salting BudgetWe have just found out that the budget for salting and snowploughing in our district has been cut from ?103,335 last year to ?30,273 for this year. This work is done by the County Council.
What?s the reason for the cut? It?s nothing to do with instructions from central government, or a lack of money from the government. It?s simply that the County Council has decided to take money away from our district and spend it on salting in other parts of the County.
We think this will increase the risk of accidents and delay people getting to work. It?s really a big mistake by the Conservatives who run the County Council, and we will campaign to try to get this changed.
UPDATE: 2:30 PM Dec 31ST.
According to the Echo:
ESSEX County Council has asked us to point out that suggestions of a shortage of winter gritting salt in Essex are incorrect.
The county council would like to assure residents that Essex County Council continues to be fully prepared for icy winter conditions with more than sufficient supplies of gritting salt for the bad weather.
During the third week of December the equivalent of 42,000 miles of road was treated over five days, using several thousand of tonnes of salt.
I know several people in there 30’s and a few elderly people that fell and hurt themselves less than 2 weeks ago in all that bad weather due to pavements not being gritted, does it take several people to die because they hit there heads before the council realise how important it is. Everyone goes on about health and saftey, does this not count? It’s important to have enough grit/salt and to use it correctly, if we have not got enough salt order it! If the budget is not there, find out why and get it from somewhere else! There is a lot of questions people should be asking !!
I also was told by a shopkeeper, in Rayleigh, that three elderly people fell on the ice and were taken to hospital in three ambulances to receive attention. This was because the Council had told shopkeepers not to clear the pavements in front of their shops in case some one fell and injured themselves and could find themselves facing damages in a court of law? However the council never cleared any of the snow and ice themselves. WHO is in the wrong here?
I agree with Mike’s concerns about what happened to vulnerable residents and the need to find out why priority pavements in our main shopping areas, health centres etc., were not gritted and/or salt/grit was not made available by Essex County Council. All Councillors are expecting an explanation from RDC. It would also be more than helpful if RDC’s lawyers could give advice on liabilities which might accrue on self clearance/self gritting.
But roads are obviously also of concern to me and the many residents who also posted comments on earlier threads.
According to an Official Media Release I found by googling “ECC Local area offices with knowledge of local requirements take over deployment. Roads are treated in their order of importance and usage.”
So what was considered of importance in Rochford District?
So I decided to write on 28/12 to the County Councillor who is responsible to find out. I have not received a reply but when I do I shall gladly post it here.
Dear Councillor Hume
The message that ECC has spent a great deal of budget on gritting roads in the last 10 days has got across to the public.
They are now asking where was gritted, time and date. Obviously I only need Rochford District data please.
I look forward to hearing from you.
John, that is a very good question, which roads were gritted? The results might be very helpful in identifying where ECC considers its most important areas of the County.
If ECC was to clear roads to hospitals – then why did it take me the best part of an hour to get my sister to Broomfield (where she works as a nurse) despite the fact that I was driving a 4×4 – the Broomfield Road hadn’t seen one grain of rock salt.
Priory Chase has a bus terminating dangerously close to houses at the best of times – this road hadn’t been salted either! Oh wait, ECC wouldn’t give a monkeys about Priory Chase would it – it’s a private road!
When was this Cjav ? How were other vehicles managing on the way to Broomfield?
By the way , rumour has it that the list of bus routes that the County Council is working from is decades old….
The following Article was published by RDC on 23 December which was a full 5 days after the first snowfall and during the period of 24X7 below freezing conditions.
Did it take this long for ECC to realise that it could not fulfill its obligations?
Or did it take 5 days for ECC to give authorisation to RDC?
Or did it take RDC 5 days to realise that ECC could not cope?
The Full Article on Rochord District Matters Online is at
http://www.rochford.gov.uk/rdm/index.php/2009/12/23/rochford-district-council-help-de-ice-the-pavements/
I would have asked this question there but “Comments are Closed”. Here are a couple of Extracts to put my comment into context.
“Ensuring the roads and pavements are kept as ice free as possible is the responsibility of Essex County Council, however, due to the severity of the weather, resources have been stretched and Rochford District Council has stepped in to help out.”
“The Council offered personnel and vehicles and has been authorised to collect rock salt from the County’s stocks, to work on clearing pavements in the District, in co-ordination with the Essex County Council contractor.”
I sincerely hope that both Councils have got their acts together for later this week because the forecast is for heavy snow again…
I agree TWR as even with the light dusting of snow and the frost that we have had over the past few days there are parts of the High Street that were, once again, treacherous.
If we get a repeat of the 18th December’s snowfall, as some are forecasting, let us hope that the main pedestrian way from the station to the High Street is not fit only for Torvill and Dean to negotiate!!!
CCR
Admin, this is the Friday before Christmas, when we had the heavy snow fall – regarding how other cars were managing, well firstly there were fewer cars on the road than normal and they were moving very slowly – Broomfield Road was moving 10 – 15 mph.
When I walked to the Hambro parade to get my paper on Sunday, I noticed the pavements were pretty slippery due to the puddles of water that accumulate on them. I’ve never been very impressed with the quality of the new pavements that have been laid recently in Rawreth Lane and Downhall Road, they always seem to have standing water on them. They don’t seem to have enough camber to allow the water to run off into the kerb, and often have dips that form puddles.
Reply from an Officer of ECC on behalf of Councillor Hume to my specific question about road gritting in Rochford District below.
You say that “The local area offices, under local control conditions, can prioritise other roads to be done, but generally, the town centres and shopping areas were prioritised in the run up to Christmas.”
So what roads were gritted in Rochford District?
“Sorry Cllr Mason, there is no list of roads as such, but the map link I referred to, I forgot to mention that the salting routes can be turned on, to see the areas that are salted.
http://www.trafficweather.info/roadWeather/rwisMap.jsp?client=98
If you click the Map & Treatment button, it will show the routes in blue.
Obviously, the lines stop at the Southend boundary, but I’m assured that the routes continue into the Southend area!
If you have any specific areas I can provide the detailed routes plans, but these are based on the domain and may include routes in and out of the Rochford area.”
Here is the text of the more general information.
“At present, we are regularly salting our precautionary network of roads twice a day and locally treating any problem areas on both the precautionary network and the secondary routes. We have nearly 1900 miles of precautionary routes countywide with a fleet of 65 lorries making runs from 5 depots across the county.
Please find attached a record of the precautionary salting network actions from the 14th December to the last one carried out at 03:00 this morning. For information the Rochford district is within the Thames domain.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1063718/List%20of%20actions%20carried%20out.pdf
(this is my link above not ECC’s, so if it does not work please email me, John, and I’ll send Focus Readers a copy)
The precautionary network is salted at least twice per day or night during the colder weather, however the salt does also rely on traffic action to remove the snow and ice (See our Winter Service website for more information) (http://www.essexcc.gov.uk/vip8/ecc/ECCWebsite/dis/guc.jsp?channelOid=16246&guideOid=67105&guideContentOid=84675#precautionarysalting)
Our Winter Service Operational Plan sets out the requirements for roads to be on the precautionary network. They are :-
§ roads that are secondary distributor and above status,
§ direct access to hospitals, fire and ambulance stations,
§ roads with 4 or more buses per day,
§ areas with four or more personal injury collisions over a three years period that involving ice as a contributory factor,
§ accesses to outlying villages with 50 households or more
§ or other high risk sites (steep hills, high traffic flows etc) (Submitted to our team and risk assessed against a further criteria)
The local area offices, under local control conditions, can prioritise other roads to be done, but generally, the town centres and shopping areas were prioritised in the run up to Christmas.
More information can be found on our website at http://www.essex.gov.uk/winterservice
For reference the routes are shown on a map based on the internet at http://www.trafficweather.info/roadWeather/rwisMap.jsp?client=98
As with any weather forecasting, there is an element of prediction involved on when and where things happen, and we have to rely on this to programme the lorries in. The last run countywide was at 03:00 this morning, and this would have been completed before 07:00 this morning (Although the average run times are about 2-3 hours). We try to avoid sending the lorries out during the peak times as this affect the amount of spread the vehicles can cover.”
The RDC, RDM Online Article that I referred to in an earlier comment Number 7 about pavement gritting seems to have disappeared in a clean up.
It was at http://www.rochford.gov.uk/rdm/index.php/2009/12/23/rochford-district-council-help-de-ice-the-pavements/
But because I thought that it was interesting I saved a copy to my local drive
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1063718/Rochford%20District%20Council%20help%20de-ice%20the%20pavements%C2%A0%C2%A0Rochford%20District%20Matters%20Online.mht
Hopefully that will solve some confusion of what I was actually referring to !!
HTH
I find it very interesting to see Hambro Hill appearing on the map. Would appear it didn’t appear on the gritting lorry ‘places to visit’ during the snow before Christmas! Let’s see if they manage to cover it over the next few days!