Local highways weather resilience survey 2022

The survey was conducted by the Local Government Association’s Research and Information team in October-November 2022 to gather information about local authorities’ plans and preparations in case of severe weather, to help the LGA’s lobbying of central government and to highlight the scale of authorities’ efforts. To reflect other pressures that councils are facing, the 2022 survey additionally asked about preparedness to deal with extreme summer weather, cost inflation, and driver shortages.

The survey was sent to all 152 highways authorities in England. The response rate was 25 per cent as shown in the table below:

Notes

1.  Given the response rate, the results should be taken as a snapshot of those authorities which responded and not necessarily as being representative of authorities as a whole. It should be borne in mind that response varied by type of authority and by region. Because of the actual number of respondents, results are not broken down by type of authority or region.

2.  Further to note 1, not all users answered, or were required to answer, every question, so the response to individual questions varies. In each table, the ‘Total’ row indicates the total number of respondents to the question, but note that this includes those who answered ‘don’t know’.

3.  The winter gritting season is taken to start on 1st October.

4.  Caution should be exercised when comparing results with previous surveys as the sample of responding authorities changes from year to year.

The main findings were as follows:

Salt stocks

• 95 per cent of respondent authorities were planning to have the same amount of salt in stock for winter 2022/23 as they did for winter 2021/22, generally because they were at the limit of storage capacity, already at recommended levels, or had stocked up according to assessed need.
• It is estimated that authorities aimed to have 1.4 million tonnes of salt in stock at October 2022. They had an estimated 1.4 million tonnes in stock at October 2021, ordered a further 0.6 million tonnes and used 0.9 million tonnes during winter 2021/22.

Resources

• Respondents owned or leased, on average, eight full-sized gritters and three pieces of other gritting equipment, including snow blowers, tractors and quad bikes.
• 97 per cent of respondents were planning to take action to reduce the risk of flooding on roads, most commonly the use of gully-emptying machines (94 per cent), sandbags (79 per cent), and pumps (52 per cent).

Innovative practice

• 68 per cent of respondents were planning to share resources with other councils or emergency services during winter 2022/23. Fifty-eight per cent were planning to share salt, 42 per cent gritting machinery, 39 per cent staff, and 35 per cent gully-emptying machines.
• 79 per cent of respondents were planning to use GPS to make the gritting process more efficient, 64 per cent were planning to equip street cleaners with salt, and 58 per cent were planning to use GPS on gully-emptying machines.
• 91 per cent were planning to use community grit bins for the public, 58 per cent were planning to provide salt to other local groups, and 27 per cent were planning to use community flood wardens.

Summer resilience

• 43 per cent of respondents had applied a treatment to roads in summer 2022 to avoid melting roads, and 53 per cent indicated that they would be taking measures to protect highways infrastructure in summer 2023 should the need arise.

Costs

• Respondent authorities reported that, on average, the price of gritting salt had increased by 2.0 per cent between 2021 and 2022. Five authorities reported increases of more than 10 per cent. (Median average based on 25 respondents.)

Recruitment and retention

• 63 per cent of respondents had experienced difficulties recruiting or retaining LGV/HGV drivers over the previous year or anticipated such difficulties.
• The most common measures adopted to tackle difficulties were training existing staff (86 per cent) and the use of agency staff (55 per cent).

Salt stocks

All but two respondent authorities (95 per cent) were aiming to have the same amount of salt in stock for the 2022/23 winter season as they had for the 2021/22 season (Table 1).

Table 2 summarises the reasons for respondents having more, less or the same amount of stock as the previous year. The main reasons given for having the same amount of salt in stock were already being at or above recommended levels (47 per cent of respondents in this category), at storage limits (41 per cent), or stock reflecting assessments of need (32 per cent).

 
Authorities were asked to quantify salt stocks, and 29 did so (Table 3). The figures have been grossed to produce a national estimate by applying the ratio of salt stocks to total road length observed in respondents to all authorities, but should be treated with caution given the relatively small number of respondents. This was done for each type of authority and the results summed to produce national estimates (the same method as used in previous surveys). Changes from one year to the next can be affected by changes in the sample of authorities responding to the survey.

It is estimated that local authorities in England and Wales had 1.4 million tonnes of salt in stock at 1st October 2021, ordered a further 0.6 million tonnes, used 0.9 million tonnes during the 2021/22 winter season, and aimed to have 1.4 million tonnes in stock at 1st October 2022.

Base: 56 authorities

Resources

A total of between 18 and 31 respondents provided information about gritting equipment (Table 4). Across all this group, councils or their contractors owned or leased a total of 547 full-sized gritters (median of eight per council), 26 mini-gritters (zero), and 169 other pieces of gritting equipment (median of three). The latter included snow blowers, tractors, ploughs, quad bikes, footway spreaders, and hand gritters.

Base: 31/31/18 authorities

All but one respondent (97 per cent) were planning to take action to reduce the risk of flooding on local roads (Table 5), most commonly using gully-emptying/cleansing machines (94 per cent), using sandbags or similar to contain floodwater (79 per cent) or using pumps (52 per cent).

Innovative practice 

More than two-thirds of respondents (68 per cent) were planning to share resources with other councils and emergency services over the 2022/23 winter weather season (Table 6), most often salt stocks (58 per cent), gritting machinery (42 per cent), staff (39 per cent) or gully-emptying machines (35 per cent).

All but three of the 33 respondents were planning to implement at least one of the listed measures for the 2022/23 winter season, to be delivered both within the council or by local groups (Table 7).

Looking at measures within the council, just over three-quarters (79 per cent) were planning to use GPS technology on gritters, 64 per cent were planning to equip street cleaners with salt, and 58 per cent were planning to use GPS on gully-emptying machines. One in three (30 per cent) intended to use a variety of treatments on pavements other than salt, most commonly liquid de-icers.

Turning to measures within the local community, nine out of ten respondents (91 per cent) were planning to use community ‘grit bins’, 58 per cent were planning to provide other local groups with salt or equipment, and 27 per cent were planning to use community flood wardens.

Summer resilience

Two out of five respondents (43 per cent) applied a treatment tor roads in summer 2022 in order to avoid roads melting while 51 per cent did not (Table 8).

Those authorities which did not apply a treatment to roads were asked why. Most (72 per cent) did not perceive a need for such treatment (Table 9).

Around a half of respondent councils (53 per cent) intended to take measure to protect the highways infrastructure in summer 2023 if the need arose (Table 10). Around a third (32 per cent) were unable to say.

Measure which might be take included dusting of roads, monitoring of road temperatures, new weather stations, and a programme of resurfacing.

Costs

Respondent authorities reported that, on average, the price of gritting salt had increased by 2.0 per cent between 2021 and 2022. Ten authorities reported no change while five reported increases of more than 10 per cent. (Median average based on 25 respondents).

Recruitment and retention

Almost two-thirds of respondents (63 per cent) had experienced difficulties recruiting or retaining LGV/HGV drivers over the previous year or anticipated such difficulties (Table 11).

 
Among those who had taken experienced recruitment or retention difficulties, the most common strategies to help were training existing staff (86 per cent of this subset of respondents), use of agency staff (55 per cent) and the provision of non-financial benefits (41 per cent) (Table 12).