Aberdeen’s roads and pavements are to be prioritised for gritting with an anticipated spend of £1.57million for the 2024/2025 winter.
A report agreed on Tuesday, 3 September 2024, by councillors at Net Zero, Environment and Transport Committee, about the Roads Winter Service Plan said that if winter conditions are more severe, an additional budget will be spent—the total spend for the previous three winters was £1.84m in 2023/24, £1.971m in 2022/23, and £1.37m in 2021/22.
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Why? Free to subscribe, no paywall, daily business news digest.
Aberdeen City Council Co-Leader Councillor Ian Yuill said: “Although winter is still some time away, it is never too early to think about getting ready for it. People will soon be able to apply for a free one-tonne salt bag as well as getting access to the big community salt bins in 20 locations around the city. As always, I hope this winter will be a mild one. If it is not, the Council is ready for cold, icy, and snowy weather.”
Aberdeen City Council Net Zero, Environment and Transport committee vice-convener Councillor Miranda Radley said: “We know that our staff cannot be everywhere at once but they do go above and beyond to ensure the city’s key roads and pavements are kept gritted according to the agreed prioritised plan. It’s good to hear that our gritting services are ready for the oncoming winter, whatever weather it will throw at us.”
The report said it is not feasible to salt every road, pavement, and cycleway around the city at the same time so they are being prioritised, with main routes given top priority. Roads are split into primary, secondary, and other routes, and pavements/cycleways are split into priority one and two routes.
Gritting for priority two pavements is being expanded for winter 2024/25 to include areas with higher footfall, are in locations known to have higher levels of vulnerable users, or are known locations which are particularly treacherous in winter conditions.
The report to committee said effects of climate change continue to present challenges continuing from the last few winters, where there seems to be a pattern of weather behaviour establishing whereby temperatures rise during the day, often accompanied by rain, before falling rapidly and freezing through late afternoon and evening.
Historically, an early morning grit was often sufficient to treat routes for a 24 hour period, however the recent weather patterns have seen regular requirements for routes to be treated multiple times through the day as wash-off and freeze-thaw removes residual salt. A lesser requirement for morning grits, and greater for later grits has been observed. It has meant a higher number of gritter runs to treat the primary route network.
The report said last winter, a NHS Grampian-led trial was carried out where three community councils were supplied with one-tonne grit bags and a hand-propelled pavement gritter. The Council provided forecasting information on an advisory basis to the community councils which could inform whether they chose to grit. It is understood that the NHS is carrying out analysis of fall data in the trial areas in order to determine whether there have been any discernible benefits of the trial. If there have been, it is anticipated that this scheme may be run again, and potentially expanded, however this is an NHS decision.
The report to committee said salt stock levels will be taken back up to about 11,500 tonnes – 14,697t was used last year – and this stock can be topped up with regular programmed deliveries throughout winter.
There are currently more than 900 salt bins throughout the city based on historic requests and the committee agreed to continue the policy of not issuing any additional salt bins but to further promote the issue of one tonne bags of salt for community use.
The one-tonne community salt bags are given to residents or community groups willing to carry out self-help winter treatment.
In addition, there are 20 large capacity grit bins from which the public can collect salt in locations such as supermarket or community centre car parks.
