Snow clobbers roads budget

The council's highway engineers said that dealing with last week's arctic snap had cost them almost a quarter of the £2.1m annual maintenance budget.

Coun Bob Pendlebury, the county council's cabinet member for the environment and transport, said although there were weeks of winter remaining and there was still the potential for more snow and icy road conditions, the county council would have to continue to tackle the conditions.

He said: "Last week's weather made a big hole in our winter road maintenance budget, but whatever else happens we remain committed to keeping the county on the move." At 2pm on January 26, as the bad weather started to bite, the council began salting its 32 key winter maintenance routes, which is four per cent of its highway network.

The operation continued until 4pm on Thursday, January 29, and during that time the county council used its full fleet of gritters and snow ploughs and had to call in additional vehicles from district councils and other contractors to help supplement their efforts.

Last Thursday, 57 vehicles were used in pre-salting, snow salting and snow clearance operations. During the four days of severe winter weather, 5,300 tonnes of salt were used costing £138,000 and more than 80 people were employed on winter maintenance operations working a two-shift system, for 3,100 man hours - the final bill coming to £480,000.

Coun Pendlebury said the costs reflected the scale of effort which was necessary to keep County Durham on the move during extreme weather conditions.

He said "Our resources were at full stretch in keeping just the priority routes and some of the important minor roads open during last week's winter weather.

"We were able to fulfil our responsibilities with regard to those but at a significant cost.

"Dealing with the sort of conditions we had last week can cost around £100,000 a day and that is without getting on to the minor roads and housing estates."