Issued by City of York Council
Almost 300 residents and businesses have responded to a comprehensive five-week consultation, which will help determine how and where the council provides winter maintenance across the city.
A report will be taken to a public Decision Session on Wednesday 9 October outlining proposals on the future provision of the winter maintenance service.
City of York Council listened to requests for a longer consultation period and extended the deadline for feedback, which enabled more people to have their say on the criteria used to grit routes and the location of grit bins, which will be used to help rationalise and streamline services to focus on priority areas.
Of those who responded, 82.9 per cent agreed with the council’s approach that priority should be given to areas in York where it is most needed.
When asked where they would like to see gritting prioritised in the city, the majority of responses (52.3 per cent) selected ‘A’ roads like Fulford Road, with access for emergency services was the second top selection, and the third most popular option was to prioritise frequent bus services (28 per cent). This reflects the original proposal on gritting routes made by council officers.
There were also a number of comments asking for school bus routes and for ‘frequent’ bus routes to include those with intervals up to 30-minutes in one direction.
At next week’s meeting, the Cabinet Member for Environmental Services will be asked to approve option five in the report, which would modify the initial proposal to reflect this feedback.
Currently, there are 145 grit bins which are funded by the Highways department and 56 are self-funded and so do not form part of the review and consultation. Others were previously funded by Ward Committees.The proposals would increase the number of grit bins funded through the Highways department to 150.
The consultation also collected the contact details of residents who said they would be interested in becoming a snow warden and the council hopes to build on this popular initiative, which has so far attracted over 120 volunteers across the city.
Cllr David Levene, Cabinet Member for Environmental Services, said: “Throughout this review we have listened to residents and have made changes based on their feedback, including extending the consultation and a recommendation to modify the gritting routes.
“This review will enable us to make savings made necessary by reduced Government funding whilst for the first time since 1996 draw up a clear, fair, transparent policy on salt bin placement and our grit network that puts residents’ safety at its core.”
The report and feedback from the winter maintenance consultation is available to view here.
The safety of residents and visitors is paramount and measures will be put in place during conditions where gritting is required, to ensure provisions are in place to grit all key routes when necessary.