Salt depot project to serve county in severe winters

A planning application has been submitted for the "strategic" storage facility at Carnaby, which will hold another 3,500 tonnes.

Over the winter East Riding Council refused to say how much salt it had in stock but it has now emerged that the authority put in an emergency request for 1,000 tonnes to tide them over Christmas and also bought in more salt from elsewhere.

A scrutiny committee report said the new store will help to provide greater resilience "should difficulties arise again".

A new depot would be used alongside an existing one in Carnaby, as well as further stores in Beverley, Market Weighton and Hedon,

The report – to be discussed next week – said the winter service has been "severely tested but performed well".

A survey carried out just after last year's severe weather found that most town and parish councils (85 per cent) wanted more roads to be gritted and nearly half wanted more footpaths to be treated.

It said: "Not surprisingly most people would like to see more roads and footpaths treated than currently are with nothing being removed from the service and to have the costs picked up by the council."

It adds: "Interestingly a reasonable percentage agreed the council achieved what it set out to (69 per cent), however, only 46 per cent were then satisfied.

"This does highlight a gap between general expectations of what a council should achieve during the winter against what the service is actually set up to deliver."