Tonight's Evening Telegraph covers my concerns about winter maintenance in the West End and across the city (see http://tinyurl.com/winterissues)I agree with the council leader that front-line staff who undertake winter maintenance should be applauded for the individual efforts they have made, but the SNP administration doesn’t seem to grasp the point made by many residents that the council level of resource made available did not seem to recognise the particularly challenging weather conditions over this festive period. I support an urgent and full discussion by councillors of future winter maintenance policy so that lessons can be learned for future years and indeed for the remainder of this winter.
Residents appreciate that residential streets could be gritted only after priority routes such as bus routes are cleared, but there are concerns about the availability of grit in grit bins, following numerous complaints about empty grit bins.
The City Council has implored residents to make use of grit bins to keep residential roads and paths clear whilst priority routes are being gritted by the City Council, but it’s a pointless request if the grit bins in residential areas are empty.
I have received complaints that three grit bins in the hilly Pentland area – not gritted by the council as yet – have lain empty and that’s also been the case for a number of grit bins in the streets north of Perth Road too.
I was today given an assurance by the council that 16 two man crews had been refilling grit bins across Dundee all day today and it was planned to continue with this level of resource for most of the rest of this week.
A City Council representative advised me :
“Starting this morning all grit bins in the City should have been re-filled at least once by Wednesday Night, ie 6th Jan and we have sufficient grit to do this. Once all are re-filled the crews will then go back to the start and re-fill any they come across that require topping up. The continuation of grit bin refilling operations as all Winter Maintenance activities is weather dependant and may change dependant on the prioritisation of resources available.”