How are Havering's Roads Gritted

Cllr Andrew Mann, who was Havering's Cabinet Member for StreetCare for three years, gives an overview of how the gritting operation works in Havering. During his time as the Cabinet Member, he spent a night out with one of the crews seeing how the whole operation works (pictured above at the salt store during loading, pre diet I have to say)

This week's extreme weather conditions saw Havering Council bring into operation its most extensive road gritting programme for over 15 years.

The Council has five gritting vehicles. Usually four vehicles operate, with one spare. This week during the heavy snowfalls all five operated. The grit is loaded at the Councils small depot in Rainham Road, the vehicles and the JCB needed to load them, are all kept at the Purfleet Depot.

During periods of heavy snow and ice, StreetCare suspend road sweeping and staff switch to gritting important pedestrian areas, such as shops, school entrances, old peoples homes. Teams of staff from Parks, will use grit to clear entrance roads and paths around some of the bigger parks, see picture below of staff at Bedfords Park on Monday.

Prioritising roads

The total length of roads in Havering is 618 km, excluding trunk roads where gritting is carried out by Transport for London (TfL) and The Highways Agency. The total length of priority one roads is approximately 288 km. This is approximately 47% of the Boroughs roads. In Havering the only roads covered by TfL are the A12, A13 and A127. The Highways Agency is responsible for the M25.

Gritting operations during the night of Sunday 1st / Monday 2 February, the night of heaviest snowfall, the gritting crews put down 125 tonnes of salt – the most they have put down in 15 years. A normal night would see 20 to 30 tonnes. All five of Havering’s gritting vehicles were out, with crews started gritting a 5pm on Sunday and worked until 5am Monday. A new team carried on the operation from 7am.

Roads are gritted in the following priority order:

Main roads and bus routes including the accesses to emergency service centres. Gritters will only move onto other roads once these roads are clear.

Highways to essential industrial establishments, mainline and underground stations, bus garages, shopping centres and pedestrian areas.

Other commuter routes.

Single accesses to schools.

Residential roads and footways.

Roads to single premises.

For more information about Havering Council's Snow Plan click on the following link. http://www.havering.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=11637&p=0