Clearing the Roads

We have more than 20,000 tonnes of salt stocked at various strategic locations around the city at the start of winter. Our largest stockpile, 10,000 tonnes, is stored at our Olive Grove depot in a special salt barn, purpose-built to keep the moisture content of the salt at the right level for effective spreading.

 

In partnership with our supplier, Salt Union, we automatically monitor our salt stock and re-supply throughout the winter season.

 

We also have a further 10,000 tonnes of salt reserved for Sheffield at a salt mine in Cheshire should things start to get really bad.

 

It is important to minimise the environmental impact of storing and then spreading tonnes of rock salt on the roads, which then gets washed away by rain and melting snow. The salting equipment we use is calibrated and regularly checked to ensure that the correct rate of spread is applied, while the salt barn at Olive Grove is a sealed, water proof, reinforced concrete dome specially designed to prevent run-off into streams and rivers.

 

The Council has a core fleet of 28 large bulk gritters plus 5 smaller bulk gritters.

 

We also have tractor ploughs and a snow blower for when the snow is very heavy.

 

The core fleet is supplemented by bulk gritters and tractors  provided by our contractor partners.