Herts Winter Road Team Prepared For Worst

21 November 2013, 18:17 | Updated: 21 November 2013, 18:21

With 39 new gritters and 13,500 tonnes of salt - Hertfordshire County Council claim they're better prepared than ever for this winter.

Derek Twigg is responsible for making sure the road network in Hertfordshire runs smoothly and told Heart: "Our partner contractor Ringway have invested more than £3m in 38 brand new gritters.

It allows our service to be further improved with more accurate more reliable, smarter vehicles."

But the public can do their bit too in helping the gritters in the bad weather by not blocking the roads with bad or inconsiderate parking. Mr Twigg added: "Difficult routes in the winter are those roads which have lots of parked cars, and we want to be able to get around to clear those streets too."

Over an average winter, 54 of the fleet of 61 vehicles are used on each salting run - with an average winter they'll be deployed about 40 times; last winter was exceptionally cold and saw 78 runs.

On every salting trip, the gritters cover near half of Hertfordshire's entire road network - more than 1500 miles (the eqivalent of salting the distance between Lands to and John O'Groats.. and back).

Each salting trip takes around 2 hours and uses 300 tonnes of salt and 300 gallons of fuel.