Kirklees Council's winter chaos road repair bill hits £3.5m - and rising

Sep 4 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE bill to repair roads ravaged by the bitter weather last winter has now reached £3.5m.

But Kirklees Council has bought a massive amount of grit in a bid to stave off more misery on the roads this year.

A month of snow in December and January, followed by further bitter weather, depleted grit stocks to nothing.

The Government took control of all grit as an emergency and rationed it out to councils.

But this year Kirklees has already bought 25,000 tonnes of grit – more than four times the 6,000 tonnes recommended by the Government and enough to do 166 gritting runs.

More than 20,000 potholes have been repaired in Kirklees so far this year.

A Kirklees Council spokeswoman said: “The council is still dealing with reported potholes which just demonstrates the extent of the damage caused throughout the district by the severe weather.

“The council will continue to carry out this work to make sure that the roads are as safe as possible.

“There are now four resurfacing teams carrying out extensive patching work across Kirklees to repair areas damaged by frost and ice.

“There have been over 300 streets patched or surfaced since January at a cost of £3.5m.’’

She added: “At this time Kirklees has 25,000 tonnes of rock salt in stock – well in excess of the government’s recommended levels of 6,000 tonnes.

“The Streetscene Service has worked very hard though the summer months to obtain sufficient supplies of rock salt to avoid being in a similar predicament to last winter.

“As well as getting ahead of the queue and securing increased stocks of rock salt at very competitive prices, we have been working with our West Yorkshire partners to establish a greater combined resilience in salt stores across the region.’’