Clearway Gritting maintain a portfolio of gritting services clients’ across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, London and the South East. Most of Clearway’s gritting clients are private companies who employ a gritting company to keep their offices open in the bad winter weather we have experienced in recent years. Companies hire Clearway Gritting for carpark gritting and to keep side roads and pathways safe and clear of snow so their staff and customers can always reach their offices.
Clearway Gritting monitors County Council gritting services in bad weather
However, to offer effective winter gritting to our clients we need to be aware of the work done by the county council gritting services and work with them to keep as many roads as possible open when snow is forecast. We closely monitor the work of the county councils so we know when and where they will be gritting. We gritted over 115,000 km of roads and paths during the last gritting season and on winter nights when it is snowing we can often get up to thirty four drivers and support staff out gritting.
How Hertfordshire County Council operate winter gritting services
Hertfordshire County Council is a good case study. Hertfordshire County Council provide a winter gritting and salting routes map on their website which details which roads they grit in bad weather. They prioritise primary routes – A and B roads, major bus routes and one road in and out of each village. Then if they have the facilities to grit the secondary routes they will grit other roads. These include steep roads in urban / residential areas or country roads where drainage is poor.
Hertfordshire local community self-help scheme
According to the Herts County Council website local groups and associations can help their local community with a self-help scheme. You can ask for free salt if you represent a resident association, resident groups, town and parish councils, schools or community groups and charities. However, there is a limited amount of salt to give away and you can only apply for salt once per year.
Andrew Sherriff, Director, Clearway Gritting, St Albans, Hertfordshire said: ‘The County Councils do a great job of gritting the primary routes across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, London and the South East during the winter months. Councils such as Hertfordshire issue a Winter Operational Service Plan for 2017/2018 that provides guidance and direction on how they will manage the winter gritting season. Gritting companies like Clearway Gritting benefit from being able to access this information so we can review the map on their website showing the primary routes they grit. We also follow each Council’s twitter feed so we have up to date information on where the Council gritters are going in heavy snow. However, our gritting clients are often based away from primary routes so they need us to grit the access roads to their offices and undertake car park gritting and clear paths. Although some groups can apply for salt many county councils such as Hertfordshire do have a limited supply of salt and we would recommend to be effective you should grit roads too. Therefore if we have a particularly bad winter again these groups with salt bins may need to purchase extra supplies of salt or look at alternatives such as employing a local Hertfordshire gritting company.’
For more information read: How Clearway Gritting kept clients working over the extended winter gritting season.
