Grit shortage – Take extra care
Grit shortage – Take extra care
Only ‘A’ roads will be gritted! Other roads including ‘B’ roads (Seven Hills Road, St Georges Avenue, Heath Road, Hanger Hill and Brooklands Road) will not be gritted!
Surrey County Council recently advised us :
"Our fleet of gritters are continuing to salt roads, although the bad weather across the country in the last few days and weeks has meant there is now a national shortage of salt. In an effort to preserve our stocks we have decided only to salt the county's A roads and routes to those hospitals with accident and emergency departments until reserves can be replenished.
We had stockpiled almost 9,000 tonnes of salt for this winter and our fleet of gritters spread around 6,000 tonnes of salt on the county's roads during the Christmas and New Year period to keep motorists moving. Around 4,000 tonnes was used in one week alone during the worst weather to keep people safe. During an average winter Surrey would require just 6,000 tonnes to see it through to spring. But the prolonged bad weather so far this winter has meant the council has less salt reserves than it would like to have at this time of year. The council has orders in place for more salt but the national shortage means deliveries are not guaranteed.
The council's 1,400 salt bins will continue to be filled but with sand so salt can be reserved for the roads. Our teams are also treating main footpaths and pavements in town centres."
We have underlined a key sentence in this SCC statement that only A roads will be salted during this period of shortage – this means that the only roads that will be salted/gritted at the moment are the East-West A roads - Queens Road A317/Byfleet Road A245/and Oatlands Drive A3050!NOTE that B roads including Seven Hills Road B365 as well as Brooklands Rd B374/Heath Road B374/Hanger Hill B373 and St George’s Avenue B372 will not be gritted. We have written to SCC and our County Councillor to ask for this policy to be reviewed.
10th Jan 2010
