GRIT stocks have been boosted by a third in a bid to keep the county’s highways open this winter.

There was chaos on roads across Worcestershire and the UK when plummeting temperatures, ice and snow combined to nearly exhaust the county’s grit stocks earlier this year. In a bid to prevent any repeat, the county council now has a third more grit than last year and has made changes to their winter service, running from October to April.

Jon Fraser, highways response manager, said Worcestershire County Council had boosted capacity to take 10,600 tonnes of grit in its hangers.

“We’re as prepared as we could be and ready for whatever comes our way,” he said. The grit is spread by a fleet of 26 gritters on all the county’s A-roads, and many bus routes, B and C-roads.

At one point in February this year, the council’s six depots were down to under 1,000 tonnes of grit as suppliers struggled to cope with a national shortage.

The county council had to ration spreading and managed to hold out for warmer weather only by prioritising the routes it treated and boosting stocks with ordinary table salt.

“We’ve still got a few tonnes of salt available,” said Mr Fraser.

“But as with every year, we looked at making revisions after last winter and have a third more grit in now than we had last year.

“We’ve changed our storage as well, so we can get more in the depot hangers.

“And we’ve looked at covering more bus routes.”

The council has changed the way it is warned about cold weather systems by the Met Office which will help save grit, with Worcestershire now divided into four sub-districts.

“That will let us have more localised forecasting, whereas before we had to rely on county-wide monitoring and grit every single road in Worcestershire,” added Mr Fraser. He said hard lessons had been learned from last year’s experience, and the county’s winter road officers monitoring forecasts at their County Hall headquarters would be well prepared for another grit shortage if the worst happens again.

The application process for grit bins is also changing with new criteria being introduced.