Keeping the Borough Moving During the 'Big Freeze'

The inability to update this website during and after the weekend of the 18th and 19th December meant I wasn't able to comment here about our efforts to keep the Borough moving and help keep people safe following the huge snowfall experienced on Saturday 18th and subsequent freezing weather. However, with a thaw having finally arrived, now is a good time to look back and consider any 'lessons learnt,' especially as there could be lots more cold weather to come over the next couple of months.

You may be aware that we were able to defy a national shortage of grit earlier in the year by working through the spring to identify and secure an additional supply of salt from overseas. We ultimately placed an order around the time of the longest day of the year for 3,000 additional tonnes of salt from Sweden. This took us to more than double our previous maximum capacity for grit, and entailed locating extra storage for it at Twinwoods in Clapham. We did pay a premium for the salt, but with literally no salt available to purchase domestically at the time, there was no domestic price to compare it to, and I simply wasn't prepared to take "there's no salt" for an answer.

I visited the store at Twinwoods last week to have a look, and can confirm we have plenty left! Our early preparedness has obviously stood us in good stead, and allowed us to continue to treat all so-called category one and two roads, which in practice means we were able to continue full runs throughout the period of frozen weather.

I chaired daily meetings at Borough Hall of all relevant parts of the Council's operations to make sure we were on top of things. Clearly, a key part of the Council's job in situations such as these is to keep residents fully updated and informed of what we're doing and of any impacts on services. I believe that the Council did this relatively successfully, and I stressed at all times the importance of ensuring the website, the call centre staff, twitter feeds, local media etc. all had the most up-to-date information in order that local households could find out as easily as possible whether, for example, to put the bins out or to expect the local roads to be gritted. As I say, I believe the Council was better in this regard than it has been in the past, but if you have any comments or experiences you would like to relay to me, please do get in touch at dave.hodgson@bedford.gov.uk

Here's hoping for a period of milder, boring weather!