Minister considers salt rules after big freeze chaos

COUNCILS could be forced to maintain a minimum number of days' salt supplies after the problems keeping the road's open during the big freeze.

Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis is considering the move amid concern "a good number" of local authorities failed to heed recommendations they should keep six days of supplies this winter. It left the Government to take control of the nation's supplies through a "salt cell" group.

Lord Adonis was responding to concerns by Sheffield Hillsborough MP Angela Smith, who called for councils which did not have the minimum supplies to be named and shamed in the interests of "transparency and public knowledge".

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Lord Adonis said: "I believe it might be we need to take further powers in respect of the handling of severe weather, and those powers may include absolute requirements on local authorities to maintain an adequate supply of salt."

He said the salt cell would have been needed even if every council had kept up six days' of supplies and admitted it was a "difficult judgment" to make. But he added: "There was no excuse for any local authority not to have six days' of supply. If every local authority had kept those six days of supplies we would have been that much better prepared."

Lord Adonis said a review would be carried out soon to examine whether more lessons can be learnt from the response to the weather.

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