More about Winter Gritting

Who is Responsible?
We are the Highway Authority responsible for winter gritting and snow clearance of public highways within the Borough.

Why do we do it? 
We aim to provide an effective and efficient winter service that will allow;  

•  the safe passage of vehicles and  pedestrians on priority routes
•  to control delays due to winter weather
•  to carry out essential services safely

What's the Legislation behind Winter Gritting?
The Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 extended the requirements of Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 to place a duty on a highway authority to ensure, so far as reasonable practicable, the safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow and ice. 

What Does the Service Include?
The service includes;

• gritting priority roads
• snow ploughing of priority roads
• gritting and clearing priority footways
• provision of grit bins

How do we do it?
We follow a Winter Service Plan, which sets out how we deliver the service during winter weather. This involves spreading rock salt onto the surface of roads and footways.  We have four gritting vehicles that can also be fitted with snow ploughs to clear snow. Rock Salt is used as it lowers the freezing point of water helping to prevent snow settling and ice forming.  

Grit bins are located around the Borough for residents to use on public highways.

What are the priorities for gritting? For Roads: 
We prioritise the gritting of four main routes known as 'Primary Routes' that cover the major roads,  bus routes,  other busy roads, and selected hills on secondary and minor roads within Southend. They have been selected in consultation with the emergency services and transport companies.  Each route takes approximately 4 hours to complete. View map of the gritting routes

These primary routes are of the highest priority and will be completed before gritting or snow clearing in other areas is carried out. 

We may reduce the amount of Primary Routes to be treated if there is a salt shortage and stocks need to be preserved.

For footways:
Once the roads have been completed and if salt stocks allow we will treat priority footways. These include main shopping areas, transport and  underpasses/bridges (crossing interchanges).  Other footways outside of priority footways are not gritted however  resident may use the grit bins available.

Other locations:
We may deviate from its planned routes to support the emergency services, schools and other vulnerable locations.      

What we will not do
As resources are limited;

• We will not treat residential highways and footpaths outside of priority areas
• It is not possible to grit all parts of the road and footway network