Councils could be forced to hold enough salt supplies to deal with six days of cold weather, Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said.

The Cabinet minister said that he intended to appoint a review as soon as the winter is over “to learn the lessons from the experience of the last two and a half months”. Heavy snow drifts across the country, including in Shropshire, resulted in grit stocks reaching critical levels.

Roads and schools were thrown into chaos, holding up vital deliveries and leaving workers stranded or snowed-in.

Bosses at Telford & Wrekin Council had to mix salt supplies with grit in an attempt to make their stocks last longer during the cold snap.

Lord Adonis said one possible solution to the problems experienced with grit supplies was to enforce “national requirements” on local authorities.

He said: “A report was issued last summer by the UK Roads Liaison Group into last February, which was the last period of very cold weather that we had, and that made a whole set of recommendations based on its analysis of what was a one in 18-year weather event.

“Well, we had a one in 29-year weather event in January – the worst sustained period of cold weather and snow since 1981 – and I will ask the review group to make recommendations to me about the appropriate level of resilience which we expect local and national government to observe in their arrangements.

“A key issue for me is the extent to which there should be national requirements on local government to maintain salt supplies to deal with very cold weather.”

One of the measures suggested includes that local authorities hold supplies of salt sufficient to deal with six days of very cold weather and that the Highways Agency, which is responsible for motorways and the major A-roads, should hold an additional supply over and above that.

“It is clear to me that quite a number of local authorities did not maintain a salt supply sufficient to deal with the situation in January and I think I will need to consider whether in future there will need to be requirements on local authorities to maintain set levels of salt supplies and I will be asking the review group to look at this,” said Lord Adonis.

By Sunita Patel