In reply to the many letters that have appeared in The Bolton News with regards to the gritting operation over the last few days, I would make the following comments.

Firstly, the roads in Bolton were gritted prior to the heavy snowfall on Tuesday morning. Precautionary gritting commenced on Monday evening and again at around 3am on Tuesday morning. This was done based on Met Office predictions and our own sensors across the borough that monitor actual temperatures as against the predictions.

It is not an exact science and sometimes the predictions are wrong, but it was right to do two rounds of precautionary gritting.

Once snowfall started at around 5am, the teams were then sent out immediately to both grit and plough. This operation continued during rush hour traffic, which as one would expect, hampered progress somewhat.

We have a 24 hour duty officer system in place, which allows decisions to be taken during the night. In this particular case, we were not “caught out” and the right decisions were made. It is difficult to see how things could have been any different.

Secondly, it is important to understand how grit works. Precautionary gritting will not in itself prevent snow from settling. For the grit to work effectively and accelerate the melting process, it is necessary for vehicles to move through it, in effect churning up the snow and ice.

The heavy snowfall happened when there were very few cars on the road, so that when commuters set off on their journeys a few hours later, the impression was that no gritting had happened. However by mid morning, it was clear that the grit had worked into the snow and ice.

Thirdly, in terms of routes gritted, there are 25 gritting routes across the borough which consists of all A and B roads, bus routes, and hospital roads which are treated as a priority.

Following this, a “search and destroy” operation takes place whereby individual cases may be dealt with following information from the public.

At the same time, staff are deployed to deliver grit to schools, treat town centre footpaths and other footpaths around major shopping areas etc.

There are some smaller roads that have never been on the gritting schedule, so these roads would not have been gritted. However we will be looking at some of these on a case by case basis to see if the gritting network needs to be expanded.

Fourthly, the recent redirections in the gritting service have had no bearing whatsoever on the recent gritting operation. The redirections were concerned primarily with the stand-by arrangements.

The two gritters that were sold were “spares” that had hardly ever been used in the last eight years and were, in fact, idle. They were originally intended to cover breakdowns. However the maintenance regime of the gritting fleet has been overhauled to such an extent that they were no longer required.

This was case this week. In short, had the redirections not taken place, there would have been no difference whatsoever in the operation.

Finally, it is understandable and sometimes even expected for people to be frustrated and angry when their journeys are disrupted, and people want to level blame. However, sometimes we have to accept that circumstances will conspire against us, and sometimes it is a fact that no-one is to blame.

As the executive member with overall responsibility for this service, I spent several hours with the crews on Wednesday night to see for myself the operation in progress. I have nothing but admiration for both the planning and operational staff who do a tremendous job in very difficult circumstances.

There is always room for improvement and there are always lessons to be learnt, and we will be looking into exactly how we may be able to improve the service further.

Cllr Nick Peel, Executive Member Environmental Services, Bolton Council