Chaos goes on as factory shuts and drivers struggle on roads

In South Yorkshire, despite less snow falling, the freezing temperatures meant that many motorists and commuters still struggled, with a lorry overturning at the junction of the M1 and M18 yesterday morning, causing chaos for many drivers.

One of the three routes on Sheffield's Supertram system remained closed for the day while rail and bus services were also affected by ice and slush.

Doncaster's Robin Hood Airport was unable to reopen and airport director Mike Morton said no flights would leave until Sunday morning at the earliest.

Hundreds of schools also remained closed, and Sheffield's Hallam University also announced that it would be closed for the day.

But both headteachers and hospital bosses said they hoped to return to normal on Monday with operations and outpatients appointments back on.

Many events in South Yorkshire have been cancelled or rescheduled and refuse collections were suspended in Sheffield for a fourth day. Both Sheffield and Doncaster Councils said they would attempt to collect bins on Monday.

In Hull, around 100 employees at Smith & Nephew in Hessle Road were evacuated when a number of ceiling tiles fell down inside the factory, although no one was hurt.

Power was shut down as a precaution and workers were told to have the weekend off while the damage is investigated.

Roger Teasdale who runs the site, which employs about 800 people, said: "We saw some snow damage and so decided to evacuate the factory immediately so that we didn't have people milling around.

"We decided to shut the site as a precautionary measure."

He admitted he does not know when it will reopen, but said engineers were examining the roof.

Meanwhile, Downing Street yesterday declined to offer a guarantee that the country would not run out of salt and grit, but said the nation was "in a much better position than we were last year".

The spokeswoman added there were "no major concerns" over supplies of food, petrol, diesel or gas.

Gas supplies were higher than last winter and so far there have been "no supply issues related to the cold weather", she said.

The assurances came as the freezing weather continued to cause disruption to the country's travel network.

Road rescue groups the AA and the RAC said they were each dealing with at least 2,000 breakdowns an hour.

Rail operators fared little better, with delays across the country.

At lunch time more than a quarter of rail services were not running and of those able to operate a little over half were running on time.

The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) said services in south east England and Scotland were the hardest hit.

Cross-channel services were also badly affected, with Eurostar cancelling 17 trips yesterday because of the poor weather conditions in the UK and Northern France.

The high speed passenger train, which operates between the UK and Europe, said it would run on a significantly reduced timetable until at least Sunday.

No end in sight for big freeze

Forecasters are warning that temperatures will remain low over the weekend and say it is likely to remain cold for at least another week.

"The problem is the ground temperature is lower than the air temperature so this makes thawing difficult," said Aisling Creevey, a forecaster with Meteogroup.

The North of England will remain cold and overcast, although there might be a slight reprieve today for the South with a rise in temperatures to about 5C expected.

But that will not be enough to melt the ice which is expected to be worsened by rain in places this morning as it freezes on top.

"Any thaw will "be a very slow process", said Miss Creevey. "It's a big, icy mess – I would be really advising caution, it is going to take time to thaw out."