After a cold, icy week , it’s worth making one thing clear – dealing with snow and ice is the responsibility of County Highways, not any other council.
Parish and Town Councils can volunteer to help – if they do, the County Council then gives them 1 tonne of salt and expects them to find members of the public to use it on pavements.
1 tonne of salt is clearly inadequate for a town the size of Rayleigh. So it’s not right to blame Rayleigh Town Council for any shortcomings.
To rub, um, salt , into the wound, we know in some cases the County Council has just been giving people the Town Council’s name name and phone number as the body responsible for clearing pavements in Rayleigh!
Incidentally, there used to be a LOT more money in the County Council budget for gritting and snowploughing in our district. But it was savagely cut in 2003 from over ?100,000 per year down to ?30,000 per year. Other parts of Essex didn’t suffer this cut.
Presumably that’s why the County Council can’t give Rayleigh two tonnes of salt….
Thanks to those individuals who clear snow from pavements outside their houses – it saves alot of people from walking in the road. Perhaps volunteers would help clear pavements if there was some form of network/support/guidance/list of areas to clear? How hard could it possibly be? Then again, I remember the same blame game and no action last year.
It never fails to amaze me that in this country you have the threat of being sued should someone slip outside your home/business after clearing the pavement. On the continent it is expected that traders/householders clear their frontage and in Canada, so I have been told, if you do not clear the snow within 24hours of the snow stopping you can expect to receive a fine. I think it is about time that this country gets its act together and starts to use the common sense that now seems to be sadly lacking.
Christine, Government advice is as follows:
I think the key words are ‘cleared the path carefully’. If you actually made things much worse- say by taking the lazy way and melting the snow with hot water, which then refroze as black ice, then I suppose you are at risk of being sued. But searching briefly on the web I can’t find an actual case.
The Telegraph in 2010 quoted this lawyer as follows:
John McQuater, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, admitted: “If you do nothing you cannot be liable. If you do something, you could be liable to a legal action.”
– but then he IS the leader of an organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers
There’s a long discussion on the issue here.
Incidentally, I fell over last night on some ice and was lucky not to break anything…. still feel a little shaken now (though that was on privvate land, not a pavement)
My friend moved to the outskirts of Chicago from Shotgate a few years ago and it is a byelaw in her community that you clear your own paths, the pavement outside your property and the roads bordering your property within 24 hours or you are fined.
They also have willing teams of kids that are taught how to clear snow properly and they charge a few dollars to do the necessary.
From personal experience, the problem around here appears to be those that have cleared their own drives and then merely shoved the show onto the footpath so that you have to climb over it to use the path. Indeed, I have witnessed people using kettles of water to defrost their windscreens as well as neighbours washing cars and leaving icy lather on the footpaths too!!
CCR
I disagree that there was a shortage of salt outside the town centre. It was up to individual ward councillors to ask the Town Clerk for their needs.I obtained 11 bags of salt from the Town Council and concentrating on my roads that had steep inclines I was able to get volunteers to clear the tops of the roads leading into Down Hall Road. I was not allowed to have any more bags for my ward so was unable to extend the clearance to other areas. I would like to thank all my volunteers for their sense of community
Hopefully we can sort out some locations in different parts of Rayleigh to store some bags next winter – for example anyone in the Downhall Park way area with space in their garage?