County to reject all Hunts gritting requests bar one

ALMOST every request from parish councils and councillors in Huntingdonshire to add roads to the county council’s winter gritting runs is set to be rejected.

ALMOST every request from parish councils and councillors in Huntingdonshire to add roads to the county council’s winter gritting runs is set to be rejected.

Following last winter’s very cold weather, during which stocks of salt had to be rationed, Cambridgeshire County Council commissioned extensive consultation with district and parish councils.

The exercise generated a total of 15 requests from Huntingdonshire, mostly from parish councils. County council engineers are recommending the cabinet to reject all but one – School Road in Warboys, because it runs alongside a fen drain.

Rejected requests were to grit roads in Abbots Ripton, Easton, Eltisley, Fenstanton, Great Gransden, Spaldwick, Woolley, St Neots, Stonely and Warboys. Three of them came from county councillors – two of them cabinet members.

The county’s cabinet is expected to decide on Tuesday on a new precautionary network of roads across the county – which are gritted when below-freezing temperatures are predicted – consisting of all A and B roads; links to A & E hospitals and other emergency services, strategic locations as defined by central Government, roads adjacent to major Fen drains, bus routes used more than five times a week, and distributor roads to industrial estates.

A secondary network of infrequent rural bus routes and roads that link isolated hamlets will be gritted only if a cold snap is expected to last for five days or longer.

For the first time, the county is set to grit some cycle routes – using a brine-spraying quad bike that is due to be delivered early in November – and some footpaths, to be treated by knapsack sprayers.