Last week's arctic snap left Durham County Council with a bill of almost half a million pounds.

The Council's highway engineers yesterday confirmed that dealing with just four days of winter weather had cost them almost a quarter of their entire £2.1million annual road maintenance budget.

At 2pm on January 26 as the bad weather began to bite the council began salting its 32 key winter maintenance routes, which amount to four per cent of its total highway network.

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

On Thursday alone a total of 57 vehicles were used in pre-salting, snow salting and snow clearance operations on Thursday alone.

The County Council's fact file also revealed that of the four days of severe winter weather last week a total of 5,300 tonnes of salt were used at a cost of £138,000, more than 80 personnel were employed on winter maintenance operations working a two shift system, for a total of 3,100 man hours -the total bill coming to £480,000.

Coun Bob Pendlebury, the council's Cabinet Member for the Environment and Transport said the costs reflected the scale of effort which is necessary to keep County Durham on the move during extreme weather conditions.

"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,'' he added.

"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 onto the minor roads and housing estates.''

There were, however, he said several weeks of winter remaining and there was still the potential for more snow and icy road conditions. "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,'' he said.