Council prepared for winter weather

THE council is more than prepared for icy weather.

Around £1 million is set aside every year as part of the council’s winter maintenance programme with staff on standby 24 hours a day, seven days a week – even during Christmas and New Year.

There are around 3,526 kilometres of road in Carmarthenshire and around a third is salted when weather conditions demand it.

Once the decision to salt the roads is taken, approximately 1023 kilometres are treated usually within three hours of a bad weather warning.

If snow should fall, snow clearing work comes into operation across the county.

Executive Board Member for Technical Services Cllr Colin Evans said: “We do everything we can to keep our roads safe for both motorists and pedestrians during the winter months.

“We have 16,500 tonnes of salt in storage ready to grit the roads when the temperatures drop, that’s double the amount we had four years ago. We also have 1,100 grit bins across the county to treat local roads and pavements.

“The council has a large fleet of specialist vehicles for use during ice and snow with highly skilled and committed drivers, who often work late into the night and very early in the morning.”

Roads are gritted according to priority and the first to be treated are trunk roads and principal routes including roads leading to hospitals, ambulance stations, fire stations, railway stations and bus garages, important bus routes, slip roads, and known trouble spots.

In extreme conditions, secondary priority is given to main shopping areas, known trouble and accident spots (not on the first priority routes) and other bus routes.

Cllr Evans added: “We can never say we have enough salt to last the full winter because we do not know what the weather will bring; however, I can say that we are very well prepared with the recommended resilience levels met.”