Salting of County Roads in Leicestershire

Leicestershire County Council is ready to carry out precautionary salting of its County roads whenever freezing conditions or snow are forecast. The County Council has in place a pre-winter stock of 12,000 tonnes of salt located at 5 depots around the County. This is spread on the carriageway by a modern fleet of 23 vehicles.

Experienced decision makers are on call 24 hours and day, 7 days a week monitoring weather conditions and managing the winter maintenance operation. They receive weather forecasts that are linked to the County’s own weather stations utilising computer hardware in order to respond quickly to the changing conditions.

Once the decision to salt is taken approximately 45% of the network is treated in order of priority. The precautionary salting network consists of A, some B, and some C class roads, commuter and major bus routes and as far as is reasonably practicable one route into all villages. These roads are shown in red on the maps. If a frost follows rain in the early hours insufficient time will be available to salt all routes before motorists travel to work and they must therefore be extra vigilant. Only during prolonged periods of sub-zero conditions will additional routes be salted and only then if resources allow without adversely affecting the treatment of priority routes.