Winter Maintenance

Winter maintenance is crucial in terms of both the economy and road safety, and is carried out to assist the safe movement of road users including buses, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians and minimise delays caused by adverse weather conditions.


What We Do


The council’s aim is to provide an effective and efficient winter maintenance service within the city boundaries with the resources available which means:

• helping to ensure the safe passage of vehicles and pedestrians
• aiming to minimise delays due to winter weather 
• ensuring winter maintenance operations are undertaken safely

Land and Environmental Services provides this service from October through to mid April - this can be longer if forecasts indicate that cold weather will continue.

A pre-gritting winter maintenance service is provided from November until the end of March.


For the duration of the winter maintenance period the service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This service includes:

salting (or gritting) the roads snow ploughing clearing footways providing salt bins for public use at various locations around the city

What You Can Do

The Snow Code This guide contains practical tips for dealing with adverse weather, including advice on clearing snow yourself.  Read more about The Snow Code. Take care when driving Read our guide on driving in extreme weather.

Winter Maintenance Policy

Land and Environmental Services draws up a Winter Maintenance Plan every year setting down its standards and priorities for the coming winter. Winter Maintenance Plan 2011/2012 (PDF)

Further Information

For further information, please use the following links:

• Where is my nearest Grit Bin
• Salt Supplies
• Type of Salt Used
• Driving Tips
• Common Questions 
• Contacts and Links