Gritting the county's roads

The Council carries out precautionary salting on some road when temperatures are predicted to fall near freezing point. We salt the roads either at 6am or 6pm, so that we miss peak traffic times.

We prioritise these types of roads:

• Main classified routes (A and B roads)
• Principal bus routes
• Access routes to hospitals, schools and cemeteries
• Access to police, fire, ambulance and rescue services
• Primary routes serving substantial villages/communities
• Main industrial routes that are important to the local economy
• Main access routes to shopping areas
• Areas where known problems exist, such as exposed areas, steep gradients and other roads liable to icing.

The salt has to be crushed by traffic to make it effective.

Unfortunately, there are some occasions where we cannot salt the roads before the onset of icy conditions, for example:

• When rain is followed by rapidly clearing skies, salting is normally deferred until the rain stops to prevent it being washed off.
• Dawn frost occurs on dry roads. When early morning dew falls on a cold road and freezes on impact. It is impossible to forecast with any accuracy when this will occur.
• Rush hour snowfall. When rain turns to snow coinciding with rush hour traffic, early salting cannot take place as it would wash off, and gritters cannot make progress because of traffic congestion.

Here is Councillor Barry Mellor, Lead Member for the Environment and Transport talking about gritting in Denbighshire.