Agenda item

Consider report by Director – Infrastructure and Environment. (Copy attached.)

There had been circulated copies of a report by the Director – Infrastructure and Environment which provided a review of the performance of Scottish Borders Council’s Winter Service during 2022/23 and presented SBC’s proposed Winter Service Plan for 2023/24.  The Winter Service Plan was contained in Appendix A to the report.  SBC provided a winter service on almost 3,000km of roads and 787km of footway across the Scottish Borders.  The Winter Service Plan was reviewed annually and presented to Elected Members to outline the steps what aimed to make sure, within available resources, that the road and footway network was safe over the coming year.  As part of the Fit for 2024 programme of transformational change, the Council was required to modernise and adapt all of its services to meet present and anticipated future needs in a responsive and agile manner, ensuring that services could continue to be delivered cost effectively and sustainably, while delivering efficiencies and savings where required.  The winter of 2022/23 was not significant in terms of snowfall, which was limited to a few occasions.  Incidents of ice and prolonged frost were also less than the previous five-year average and on a par with those experienced the previous winter.  That led to a reduced need to treat primary and secondary routes as frequently and resulted in lower-than-average salt usage.  The Winter Service Plan for 2023/24 was similar to the previous 2022/23 Plan in terms of policy, priorities, routes, call out arrangements and resource planning.  Section 5 of the report provided details on a revised salt spread rate regime that was trialled, on approximately half of the primary precautionary salting routes, last year. It was proposed that the trial should be continued in the coming winter.  The Infrastructure Manager, Mr Brian Young presented the report and responded to Members questions.  Mr Young highlighted that no adverse feedback had been received from the public regarding in the trial.  Members welcomed the plan and highlighted that the Council delivered an excellent winter treatment service across the region.  In response to a question regarding the 359 tons of salt which had been saved as a result of the trial, Mr Young explained that salt was ordered in advance of the winter to ensure that supplies were available and that the saving represented an on the ground one.  Regarding the definition for success for the trial, Mr Young confirmed that the trial aimed to deliver the same high levels of service whilst also making savings.  It was highlighted that the colder nights of the year no real savings could be made.  In response to a question regarding the future outlook following the trial, Mr Young outlined that the fleet was always being developed, and that it would be difficult to affect large scale changes in a short period of time.  Regarding feedback of the trial, Mr Young explained that feedback from the crews undertaking the work of delivering the plan was used to assess how effective salting regimes had been.  Mr Young confirmed that the vehicles in the fleet were flexible, and that a snow plough would not be fitted to a vehicle which was carrying out gritting treatment.   The Director – Infrastructure and Environment acknowledged the need for the different SBC services to communicate and work more collaboratively with each other to deliver services across the region.  In response to a question regarding incidents where access to local and minor roads were being covered by snow ploughed from main roads, Mr Young explained that due to the way snow ploughs operated it was an which was hard to avoid.   Mr Young confirmed that work was ongoing to ensure that more data could be provided in map form to show where roads had been treated. 

DECISION

AGREED:-

(a)       note the performance of the Scottish Borders Council Winter Service during 2022/23

(b)       endorse the Winer Service Plan for 2023/24; and

(c)       to note the continuation of a trial in relation to the salting spread rates applied on 50% of the primary precautionary salting routes.