As Milton Keynes starts to bloom on the first day of Spring, Milton Keynes City Council is beginning to draw a close to its winter service season.
The City Council’s highways team and partners from its service provider Ringway have been on call around the clock since the ‘winter season’ started in October to carry out gritting runs whenever the weather fell below freezing, including the Christmas and New Year holidays.
The team gritted more than 33,000 miles of highways on 530 separate gritting runs to keep local people safe, adding two new spreaders to the route this year to handle extra-narrow streets. They’ve also sprayed 6,500 litres of brine onto Redways and attended 59 emergency callouts due to bad weather conditions.
“Often the gritting team are out late at night or very early in the morning when most of us are tucked up in bed, braving the freezing conditions to make sure the roads are safe for drivers the next day. I’d like to say a big thank you to all those whose hard work kept MK going through the icy, snowy conditions we’ve had this winter”.
Mayor of MK, Councillor Amanda Marlow visited the team at their depot in Bleak Hall, saying
“It was great to meet the team and find out about the variety of activities that go on behind the scenes to keep the network moving in winter; from analysing the daily weather forecasts to washing down the gritter lorries after each run, it’s a huge task to keep the roads safe, and all in freezing conditions too.”
Pictured: Mayor of Milton Keynes, Cllr Amanda Marlow meets some of the winter service team at the Synergy Park depot at Bleak Hall, Chesney Wold.