£6m melts away from city coffers after the big freeze

THE big freeze is set to cost city council chiefs a whopping £6.4 million - more than four times the annual winter weather budget, it emerged today.

• A huge number of man hours were needed to clear the snow

The figure for the cost of clearing snow and ice from the streets was revealed as a major review of the city's response was launched.

City leaders are now to investigate whether to spend millions of pounds more on a radical overhaul of the way they deal with the snow, including buying up new equipment to clear residential roads more quickly, fitting buses and bin lorries with snow tyres and putting more private contractors on standby to respond to bad weather.

Other measures to be considered include sending shovels and even mini-tractors to local communities to let them help them clear snow in their area themselves.

The 6.4m bill is already well ahead of the previous record of 3.9m spent last year.

The overspend above the normal budget - expected to be partly funded by dipping into the council's 10.5m of reserves - mainly relates to the cost of bringing in a series of eight different private contractors, as well as getting extra council staff from other parts of the authority to clear roads.

Before deciding what action to take, council officials will analyse the results of Scottish and UK Government research currently being carried out to assess whether the country is likely to face more bad winters in the future.

If harsher winters are expected, then staff will be assigned to a winter review team, costing up to 100,000, that will assess a series of measures and carry out a massive consultation with the public on proposals.

Mr Turley, the director of the council's services for communities department said: "If it is going to happen more frequently, the whole city needs to say 'are we prepared to spend a lot more money to make us prepared for winter?'

"This is not the sort of question you can just ask every year; we want to do it properly now and live with that decision for the next ten years.

"This year, in six weeks, we spent 6m - it is an expensive business because it is very labour-intensive.

"If the view is that we need a bigger response, we will be talking many millions of pounds each year."

Council leader Jenny Dawe said: "Unfortunately, I think it is a case of 'damned if we do and damned if we don't' because if we buy a lot of new tractors and they sit idle we will be condemned, but if we don't and we should have we will also be condemned."