We gritted 'up to 80%' of Edinburgh say road chiefs

Published on Tuesday 12 January 2010 09:32

COUNCIL chiefs today insisted they had managed to grit more than half of Edinburgh's roads during the cold snap – but admit they have no idea when the rubbish backlog will be cleared.

The city council said that from 17 December until the middle of last week, it had regularly gritted 55 per cent of the city's road network, on a par with cities such as Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Roads bosses also claimed that up to 80 per cent of streets in the Capital had been gritted at some point during the cold spell, but critics today urged people to take the figures with a "pinch of salt".

Edinburgh came in for criticism last week after heavy snowfalls and plunging temperatures trapped some residents in their homes and made some roads and pavements treacherous.

According to Glasgow City Council, roads teams in Scotland's largest city managed to clear 52 per cent of roads and 10 per cent of footways on a daily basis.

In Aberdeen, about 50 per cent of priority 1 roads were gritted on a daily basis, while in Fife – where salt supplies ran out – 59 per cent of the road network was covered.

But while other councils kept figures for the percentage of road network gritted, Edinburgh worked its out based on how much grit and salt it had been used.

Tory councillor Jason Rust, who was inundated with hundreds of complaints from constituents about the city's response, said claims that 80 per cent of roads had been treated were dubious.

He said: "I think many residents will take this with a pinch of salt. The council appears to be reacting on a day-by-day basis with mixed messages, rather than proactively taking responsibility for the situation.

"There appears to be little coordination and, most of the time, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."

He added: "Local residents who are still waiting on grit bins to be filled and for pavements to be salted, and some of whom have now been waiting weeks for their refuse to be uplifted, will rightly be suspicious of this claim by the council."

Cllr Robert Aldridge, the city's environment leader, said: "Edinburgh was better prepared than ever before for the cold snap and our winter maintenance team have worked tirelessly around the clock to help make roads safer.

"The fact that we have kept Edinburgh moving in such trying conditions is a significant achievement and testament to the efforts of the team and to those residents helping out where they can."

Meanwhile, the council said rubbish collections had returned to normal, but could not say how long it would take to clear the backlog, with some residents going over three weeks without having their bins collected.

The council said garden waste collections would be suspended to concentrate on clearing domestic waste, while street cleaning staff had been redeployed to deal with excess waste that has accumulated around on-street communal bins.