Fear that cash cuts will put Shropshire winter roads service on skids
Shropshire Council says it is "well prepared" to keep the county's roads open throughout the winter, but has warned that budget cuts will put the service under pressure in coming years.
Currently about £2 million is set aside for the authority's "winter maintenance" efforts, although a report from Steve Brown, the council's highways, transport and environment commissioning manager, says some non-essential requests could be affected by cuts in the future.
Those services include requests for extra grit boxes, one-off gritting on roads outside the "defined network" and salting for some footpaths and car parks.
According to a report prepared for the council's environment and services scrutiny committee, staff will need to make a more "robust response" to requests outside the authority's statutory responsibility.
It says: "Pressure on revenue budgets now requires a reduction to the budget to be incurred from April 2017, effectively reducing the threshold for drawing upon the severe weather reserve. Over time this could put pressure on the service, should several severe winters be incurred and therefore the reserve be depleted.
"However, the need to recognise the council's statutory responsibility is key, and that minimising areas of expenditure on none or less essential winter maintenance services now requires a more robust response from local highways staff.
"Typically, requests for additional grit boxes, 'one off' gritting runs that fall outside of the defined network, treating footpaths and car parks, when the current policy identifies that this should occur after some prolonged winter period."
Current council policy sees A and B roads gritted, along with certain important local distributor roads. In total the roads treated amount to 28 per cent of Shropshire's highways.
The authority said it would consider removing or not restocking some grit bins from next summer. The report says: "Local communities often request additional bins each year and where possible and subject to completion of a risk assessment, such requests are met.
"However, the sheer level of resource needed to keep grit bins filled can be excessive from the point of view of cost, manpower and available road salt. As in previous reviews it was strongly felt that carrying out local gritting by the use of salt bins was very inefficient."
