Gritting Routes Restored after Liberal Democrat action

Liberal Democrat councillors spotted that some roads previously threatened with being cut from gritting routes had been missed earlier this week, despite the cut being previously rejected.

Following this revelation, the council has now reinstated those roads.

In the autumn the Conservatives had proposed removing 141 roads from the gritting schedule. Following demands from the Liberal Democrats this cut was reversed. However, it appears that the restoration of some of these 141 roads was not properly carried out on the lorries’ routing software. Examples included Arundel Drive in Putnoe, Lovell Road in Kingsbrook, and the Black Tom area of Bedford.

Cllr Henry Vann said, “We have now had to step in twice to save these roads from being axed from vital gritting routes. It was obvious at the start of this week that roads that should have been gritted were being missed right across Bedford Borough and we challenged this straight away. 

We are very grateful for the hard work of the gritting crews at anti-social hours and to officers who quickly responded to our concerns. However, residents have been let down by the routes being wrongly changed and many roads being excluded. The root of this problem was the original plan from the Conservatives to cut the 141 roads and then the bodged reinstatement of the previous routes.”