Council on the right road with salt stockpiles ahead of winter
Council chiefs have reassured councillors that they have stockpiled enough salt for the winter period – despite supply chain delays elsewhere in the country.
Thousands of tonnes of salt have been ordered to support Sunderland City Council’s Winter Maintenance Plan, which keeps the roads safe and moving during wintry weather.
Although the local authority now has enough salt to deal with another severe ‘Beast from the East’ event, it faced challenges in sourcing it from suppliers earlier this year.
“One of the biggest challengesoverthelasttwoorthree monthshasbeentheprovision of salt,” said Graham Scanlon, Assistant Director of Housing Services on the council.
“In the past, it hasn’t been a problemandHGVdriverswere available to get salt fairly easily through an order.
“What we were finding from our provider was that they had salt but they had noone to drive it to us.
“HGV drivers in their system were leaving and it was a bit of a worry in the year, howeverwewereaheadofthecurve really and placed our order quite early.
“So we got the first tranche of deliveries, bearing in mind the other local authorities have only really just got theirs through.”
The council officer was speaking at Tuesday’s (December 7) Economic ProsperityScrutinyCommittee,which
was held within the new council chamber at City Hall.
Councillors heard that Sunderland had salt provision across three city sites, including one in Houghton and two in Pallion.
Mr Scanlon added: “At the moment, we have got 19,000 tonnes with another 1,000 tonnes on its way so we’re really pleased that we have got that on the ground.
“Inthelastcoupleofweeks, obviously we have been using that at a steady rate […] and we areusingthatsaltasrequired.”
Councillor Tony Taylor asked whether the salt used on Sunderland’s road network wouldbemixedwithothermaterials, such as small pieces of gravel.
This followed concerns about other local authorities using this practice in the past to make the salt “last longer” and associated impacts on roads and property.
Councilofficersconfirmed that no “mix” was being used on Wearside and that the salt was “brand new pure salt for gritting”.
Councillor Dianne Snowdon, who has been working as a Covid vaccinator at Sunderland’s Nightingale Hospital, also thanked council staff for their recent work.
“Many people know I’m working at the Nightingale and on Sunday if our grit team hadn’t been out and done the roads and the car parks, we wouldn’t have been vaccinating,” she said.
“In Middlesbrough, they had to close their centre because the roads and the car parks weren’t safe, so thank you.”
During an average winter, SunderlandCityCouncilcould use up to 10,000 tonnes of salt, while a severe weather event, suchastheBeastfromtheEast, could see up to 15,000 tonnes used.
Gritting routes are dealt with on a priority basis, with roads and routes which get very high levels of traffic and primarybusroutesbeingdealt with first.
"The council has around 15 gritters in service with spare vehicles available as “back-up in the system.”