Gritting situation

We don't normally print part of Council press releases verbatim, but we thought this one was important:

"A national salt rationing scheme was imposed by the Government last Friday restricting supplies to individual councils, who have been ordered to cut gritting by 25%. Today that was extended to cuts ranging from 40 - 50%. The activation of the emergency national system of salt allocation means that normal gritting will not be possible due to dwindling stocks of salt.

Westminster, due to its central location with 1.1million daily visitors and 600,000 car journeys, normally aims to grit all its roads and pavements. It is therefore hit particularly hard by the restrictions which means its gritters are only able to spread around one sixth of the salt they normally do during the severe weather."

Before the introduction of the restrictions we were in touch with council officers regularly and did manage to get really icy patches in the ward (including a part of Maida Vale near a bus stop outside Dibdin House) re-salted when residents reported them to us.

Jan, Alastair and Lee