Road gritting

You can find out which roads are salted in the Borough by viewing our roads precautionary salted page.

For more information about the Winter Service Policy please contact the Highway Management Group.

Winter service policy statement

1 Introduction

a. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, as the Highway Authority, is under a statutory duty to maintain the highway.  This general duty, set out in the Highways Act 1980, has been amended by section 111 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow or ice.

b. The Winter Service involves treating the highway to:

  1. Prevent ice from forming, known as “precautionary salting”;
  2. Melt ice and snow already formed, “post-salting”;
  3. Remove snow.

c. The Winter Service season starts at the beginning of October and continues until the end of April each year.

2 Policy statement

a. It is the policy of the Council to provide, as far as is reasonably practicable, a Winter Service operation that involves:

  1. The precautionary salting of carriageways on the main roads within the Borough to prevent ice from forming.
  2. The post-salting of footways and carriageways in extreme weather to melt ice and snow that has already formed to keep delays and accidents to a minimum.
  3. The removal of snow from the highway.

b. The precautionary salting of roads, covering the following criteria, should be carried out within specified times on agreed pre-determined routes:

Class “A” and other main roads

Roads used as major bus routes

Steep hazardous gradients and over bridges where known local icing conditions occur.

c. The list of roads to be precautionary salted is contained in Appendix 1. The Council cannot carry our precautionary salting on all roads in the Borough due to the practical difficulties in resource terms of presalting all roads within the specified time limits.

d. Post salting of ice will only be considered on minor roads not included in the precautionary salting routes and footways in response to a specific report that a particular road or footway is in an icy condition and then only after it has been inspected by an officer from the Highway Management Group to confirm that treatment is necessary.

e. During and after snow fall, minor roads will not be treated with salt until after the primary salting routes have been sufficiently treated to ensure that they remain open to traffic at all times. Minor roads will be treated on a hierarchical basis of importance and in response to specific requests from the Police, public etc.

f. Some minor roads, such as cul-de-sacs and particularly narrow streets, cannot be treated by spreader vehicles and would be treated in conjunction with any footway treatment.

g. The target response time is one hour between a decision being taken to begin treatment and spreader vehicles leaving the depot.  All priority routes should normally be completely treated within two hours of leaving the depot.

h. These targets apply both within and outside normal working hours.  It is recognised, however, that treatment times may vary in different weather/traffic conditions.

i. No footways, pedestrian precincts or cycleways shall be specifically designated as routes for precautionary salting.  Nevertheless, there will be a certain amount of overspill of salt onto footways and cycleways when precautionary salting is being carried out on adjacent carriageways.

j. Footways will only be treated once snow has settled or during periods of prolonged freezing conditions on a priority basis as follows:

  1. Primary Walking Routes (town centres, high streets)
  2. Secondary Walking Routes (stations, hospitals, libraries,old peoples homes, day centres, schools - during term times only)
  3. Link Footways
  4. Local Access Footways (cul-de-sacs, etc)

i.If any reports of icy/slippery footways are received outside of the above criteria the footway will be inspected to assess whether it should be treated or not.