Salting and snow clearance

Every year, when the wintry weather arrives, we go out, together with our partners, to grit the county’s roads, keeping them safe and accessible during spells of ice and snow to keep Shropshire moving in even the worst of the weather. You can find out more about what we do using the information on this page, and this video helps to explain the process...

There are hundreds of miles of roads in Shropshire and thousands of journeys to be made, so it’s important that we keep as many roads open as possible at all times. Throughout the year there’s a host of people working, sometimes through the night, to help you get where you need to be, even when temperatures plummet.

Together with our contractors, we keep a weather-eye on temperatures throughout the winter – but how do we decide when to send the gritters out?

Firstly, we need reliable information.

We subscribe to weather forecasting services from The Met Office.

From October to April we get:

• A morning summary
• A 24-hour forecast each morning
• A five-day forecast each afternoon
• Ice prediction graphs each afternoon
• Regular updates

We also subscribe to a 24-hour consultancy service from The Met Office.

All that data helps us make informed decisions, but we also have inspectors on call who can go out and see the situation on the ground. These are officers with years of experience between them who know when to react to local conditions and deploy more resources as required.

So what do we do?

When all the indicators are in place, we’ll send the trucks out from our five depots for what we call ‘pre-salting’. This is a preventative measure to stop ice forming on the roads. In extreme circumstances, we’re aiming to remove ice that’s already formed, and that’s called post-salting.

Where do we grit?

Keeping the roads clear is an expensive business so we have to prioritise. We treat 28% of the Shropshire road network, including:

• A and B roads
  
• Localised high-risk sites and important access routes
• Major town centre shopping areas
• Heavily used footways and cycle routes

This is what’s known as the ‘defined network’.

Snow ploughing

We undertake ploughing in priority order, beginning with the defined network. At least one main access route to towns and large villages will be cleared as soon as practicable. We also deploy snow blowers to remove heavy snowfall during severe weather.

What vehicles do we use?

We use 25 gritters (with five reserve vehicles). The gritters are owned by us and are located at our five highways depots. We also have nine footway ploughs and nine snow blowers.

In addition, many contractors and farmers have snow clearing equipment. Our divisional officers deploy this supplementary equipment following heavy snowfall in rural areas.

Our contractor, Ringway, has sufficient drivers to operate all of the above routes 24 hours a day, and additional staff available to deal with other winter maintenance duties as required, eg clearing snow from footways.

Local salt bins

You can use salt from your local salt bin to treat pavements and roads around where you live.

Twitter Gritter

We’ve teamed up with councils across the West Midlands to provide a regional picture of who’s gritting and when. If you’re on Twitter, you can get Twitter Gritter alerts by following #wmgrit.