Tuesday 5 January 2010

Gritting – update 5/1/2010 – or no grit for Gamesley


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Yesterday I advised that High Peak Borough Council had agreed with the county council to utilise staff to do some pavement gritting as directed by the county council.

I expressed concern that whilst the main town centres were listed within the areas that would be considered and gritting various areas including Gamesley were not on the list and that I would contact officers to find out if we could be added to the list.

The relevant head of service has come back to me this morning advising that they are gritting pavements under the direction of the county council and are essentially covering only the old priority one pavements from within the lists from when the borough were doing pavement gritting and that after checking with the county on if to include Gamesley they have been instructed to only grit the priority one areas only meaning no pavement gritting will be done in Gamesley.

In addition as there has been no road gritting done on the ring road, for a fourth day in this new year we are once again without a bus service off the estate – even if you could manage to get from you home to a bus stop given the state of the paths.

This situation is not unique to Gamesley, my fellow borough councillor Caitlin Bisknell in Fairfield in Buxton who is having the same experience, and the current problems to a certain extent do seem to stem from whichever of our Conservative controlled local authorities made the decision to change the original pavement gritting arrangements, and the apparent lack of action since to tackle the current problems. 



With no road gritters been seen on Gamesley (or from comments I’ve picked up elsewhere) anywhere in Glossop along with a slow response to the Borough Council’s offer of assistance to start doing some pavement gritting, all of which means it doesn’t look like the situation will be getting any better soon.

Caitlin also reminded me that a few years back we had suggested to the then Tory / Lib Dem / Independent Controlled Council to enable more grit bins to be provided in Buxton and Glossopdale, now this suggestion was kicked out by the Tories and there coalition partners and whilst more grit bins would not have solved the problem it would at least allow local to help to look after each other.

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