Preparing for severe winter weather

Cheshire East Council and its partners are offering a range of advice and support to residents on how to keep warm, well and safe this winter.

This week, we outline what our highways service is doing to keep the roads safe before the cold weather really hits.

Cheshire East highways team says it is fully equipped to cope as the winter weather begins to take hold.

As part of the Council and partners' Winter Wellbeing campaign, the authority, armed with stockpiles of salt, an online information centre and modern gritting vehicles, is reminding residents of its preparations and current actions.

Councillor David Topping, Cabinet member in charge of the environment, said: "Winter weather can be a worrying time for many people, especially those who need to travel. We aim to be as informative as possible in the event of severe weather conditions.

"I want to reassure residents that we are well equipped to deal with snow and ice in the weeks and months ahead."

Duty officers receive detailed weather reports, around the clock, during the winter months. These officers then decide if gritting vehicles or snow ploughs are required.

Thanks to Cheshire East highways' online service information centre, gritting vehicles can be tracked live as they salt local routes by logging on to: www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/highways

This, of course, depends on the forecast. For instance, rain could delay treatment:

• Approximately 4,000 tonnes of rock salt is stored locally and regularly replenished during the winter season;
• One-tonne salt bags can be located at short notice at strategic locations, when snow or prolonged ice conditions are forecast. The principal aim is for self help for our more rural communities;
• The gritting fleet has a GPS navigation system, which records their location and can be tracked live by members of the public using the Cheshire East highways webpage;
• Salt works by turning the ice or snow surrounding each granule into a saline solution.
• Passing traffic then breaks down the salt granules, forming a saline solution to either prevent ice from forming or to melt it.

Further advice can also be found on our website www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/highways

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.