Training | 2009.12.22
Councils accused of salt and grit failings
Local councils defended their readiness for the UK\'s cold snap today as the transport minister, Sadiq Khan said he would be demanding to know whether more could have been done to prevent thousands of motorists being trapped by snowy weather in the south of England.
The AA accused authorities of failing to learn lessons from snow storms in February this year which also brought much of Britain to a halt. Edmund King, the AA president, said local councils had failed to salt and grit roads adequately, particularly in the Basingstoke, Reading and Oxford triangle that mired around 2,000 drivers on Monday night.
"What we are getting from AA patrols and members of the public is that the roads have not been gritted or have been gritted only once. It\'s not good enough," said King. According to reports, emergency services in Reading urged the local council to grit roads and pavements in the town centre that had become impromptu ice rinks.
"If local authorities cannot cope they ought to dump grit on the side of the roads so people can do it themselves," said King.
The Local Government Association dismissed the claims as "unverified, unsubstantiated and unjustified". Still smarting from the criticism local authorities faced when roads iced up in February, the LGA said gritters had been working "round the clock" to keep cars moving.
"Thousands of council staff are working as hard as they can in what are sometimes difficult and dangerous conditions to clear roads and keep motorists safe," said David Sparks, chair of the LGA\'s regeneration and transport board. "The whole transport network has been struggling over the last 24 hours from trains, to planes and motorways, but major local roads have generally been kept moving."
Local councils are responsible for non-motorway roads in England, which make up nine out of every 10 miles of the road network. In Kent alone the county council has dropped 6,500 tonnes of salt since the icy weather swept into the UK. The LGA could not verify how much grit is stored across the country, but said that "as far as the LGA is aware" there is enough to cope with the current cold spell.
Khan said he would be "asking questions" about the response in Basingstoke, Reading and Oxford. "Basingstoke and Reading are two examples ... of where there were extreme weather conditions and there appears not to have been the gritting done," he told GMTV. Khan said local authorities had enough grit and the issue was why it had not been applied.
Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, said there appeared to be "no end" to the transport misery being inflicted on families as snowed-in roads, icy runways and broken trains disrupted the Christmas getaway plans of hundreds of thousands of people.
"Why is it that bad weather can so often bring our nation\'s transport system to a grinding halt? Whether it\'s snowbound airports without enough de-icers or trains that can\'t run when it\'s cold, life feels drastically short of Christmas cheer," she said.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/22/snow-roads-grit-local-councils
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