Is Lancashire Prepared for Adverse Winter Weather?

This weeks’ snowy and icy weather conditions have raised critical questions about the competence of the people who are in charge of the Highways Directorate at Lancashire County Council.  Severe wintry weather was forecast to sweep the county, but yet I didn’t see a single gritting wagon on my journey home on Monday night, quite the opposite of what we’ve seen even in recent months.

Imagine my surprise when I awoke to the winter wonderland scene on Tuesday morning, whilst this had considerable appeal to my pursuing my photographic hobby, it was soon to become the ultimate nightmare for those of us who commute to work.   The inalienable and undeniable facts were that the key arterial roads in Pendle had not been gritted at all, the M65 certainly hadn’t, the A56 hadn’t and neither had the A6068.  In Southfield, Netherfield Road, Barkerhouse Road and Southfield Street, all used by buses and lorries didn’t show any evidence of having been gritted whatsoever.   My usual 20-minute journey to work in Burnley became a tedious stop-start hour-long affair, it took a colleague a similar length of time to drive from his home in Earby to the end of the M65 in Colne along an untreated A56.

Some correspondents to the Nelson Leader’s letters page have made uncomfortable and uncompromising comparisons with the way the roads were gritted and cleared of snow when Pendle Council held highways responsibilities.  I remember Pendle’s own gritters being out and about through the night to treat our highways, and I certainly don’t recall the dangerous and chaotic scenes we’ve seen this week when our borough council looked after gritting and snow-clearing.  I’m left wondering if the County Council Highways Department are really up to the task of dealing with adverse weather conditions, or in the words of one former cabinet minister whether they are ”fit for purpose.”

Lancashire County Council need to get their act together and work on the principle of prevention being better than cure, the wholly inadequate response to this weeks’ wintry weather makes me wonder whether the authority was caught napping whilst the snow fell and all hell broke loose around them.  To quote a once well-known figure from the transport industry “You don’t have to be a genius to do things better than this.”