Snow: the expectations gap and Camden's performance

I’m no expert on road surfaces, or on snow. Like (virtually) all councillors on (virtually) all subjects, I need to listen to the advice of council senior managers, then apply my common sense, what residents tell me, and what I see out and about in my patch, in order to try and come to a judgement about how well the Council is doing in tackling the bad weather. And while there are always areas for improvement, my view as of tonight is that there is, on this topic, a biggish gap between what at least some people expect and what actually can be achieved.

Camden Council doesn’t have the resources to grit every road across the borough – this point is getting better understood - and it prioritises those it does based on a number of factors. Priority routes and footpaths across the borough include transport hubs, main roads, bus routes and the road network around schools, hospitals and emergency service depots. This is part of a wider network agreed across London to keep the capital moving.

The problems this weekend were not due to a lack of grit, but the fact that the heavy snow and low temperatures reduced the effectiveness of the grit. Camden actually gritted at higher distribution rates of 40 grams per m2 in the worst hit areas, but even at these rates, where snow is deeper than 6cm, salt becomes ineffective as it sits on the surface, and when road surface temperatures fall below -5 degrees it also stops working. Road temperatures in parts of the borough were down to at least -9 in places, and we saw up to 12cm of snow in the north of the borough and up to 6cm in the centre and south. All this explains why some people are convinced particular roads weren’t gritted at all for a couple of days, when streets managers were able to confirm to me when and where they were gritted. Remember, snow is water – no one expects that the council can instantly dry the pavement whenever it rains!

The Council has also been deploying all the staff and vehicles it has available. Over 200 council-contracted Veolia cleansing staff worked from 5.30am to 10pm Saturday and Sunday on footway snow clearance duties, and council crews were out each night gritting. Kentish Town police officers also helped gritting teams to clear gridlocked roads in parts of the borough hit by heavy snow and heavy traffic. It’s not clear to me that there were any other public sector staff around here just waiting around to be put to work at night and over the weekend – the council can’t reassign social workers or library staff. Unlike the way the fire service works, snow hits everywhere so you can’t get mutual support from other boroughs; they’re dealing with their own roads. Remember as well that over 70% of Camden staff live outside the borough, some at long distances, due to the nature of the local housing market.

Some people seem to have a very, very clear view of what they believe they are entitled to expect from their local council when it snows – several on twitter talked of suing the Council if they slipped on ice. But if you don’t know how much you’re paying, you can’t easily form a judgement about whether you are getting what you pay for (and of course this is true of many public services). In fact, the extra cost of winter maintenance accounts for a really small proportion of the Council’s cleansing contract with Veolia – under £200,000 (and other councils are little different). It’s important to note that Veolia takes the “weather risk” on this – we pay the same however much snow there is in a winter. But if we want more staff, and more vehicles to grit and clear snow and ice, we’d need to pay for them, and judge that spending against other public services.

Snow ploughs have been mentioned - they are used far more widely in more rural areas. Traffic calming measures, such as speed bumps make urban roads pretty unsuitable for snow ploughs.

Camden has used about 200 tonnes of salt since Thursday, with about 180 tonnes in stock. Deliveries were due today, and the council will be confirming salt stock to LLACC (the co-ordination body for local authorities in London).

The Council is hand gritting priority pavements and crossovers near hospitals, fire and other blue light services, and was gritting priority routes later today, while snow clearance continues on estates.

The Council cannot be very generous in sharing grit stocks since we need to ensure that we have sufficient to deal with our own priority routes. More than this, there is London-wide monitoring of salt use, and if we are seen to be using too much (for example not on the highway) then that might impact on any mutual aid requests for stocks Camden might make later. All councils would like to be more generous, but equally must conserve some stock given that we don’t know how long this will continue. Camden will call on the TfL central salt stockpile if there are any problems with salt supplies being delivered, but supplies are coming through at present. Camden would formally move to “resilience routes” (a tighter category than priority routes) if LLACC instructs boroughs to conserve salt supplies.

Grit bins were re-stocked on Thursday and Friday, but are now unlikely to re-filled again until Camden are confident we have enough salt.

I’ve also asked how the Council’s new community shovels programme has been doing. Well, over 1,200 emails were sent to local groups in October offering them free snow shovels. Since this offer started, the council has received over 200 requests from groups and to date over 1,000 shovels have been delivered across the borough by the council, including 160 on our housing estates. This still leaves around 2,000 shovels available from Regis Road – groups can call and pick them up on weekdays.

One other point to which there’s no answer. Given our form of life these days, cars are inevitably parked at a density on the roads of Camden that can be dangerous when it’s icy with cars and other vehicles banging into parked cars.

This aspect of council activity is under considerable scrutiny, often from people (particularly perhaps those on social media) who don’t need to use many other council services. That’s all fine, councils need to be responsive, but as councillors we just need to keep in mind as well all those other services which get much less public scrutiny – say child protection – but are of course vital. It's also the case that many of those unhappy about gritting are willing to listen and take into account the facts about resource limitations, and about salt's effectiveness in low temperatures

It is also worth us all remembering that something called “the local council” doesn’t grit streets at night or chisel ice off pavements. That’s done by a lot of relatively poorly paid staff, and all of us who have better paid jobs in warm offices, and wouldn’t have been thrilled to volunteer to work outside overnight at the weekend should try not to forget that – even as we rightly expect high quality public services.

There’s a lot of useful information now available on the website at www.camden.gov.uk/winter, including the TFL resilience route, Camden priority gritting routes, grit bin locations, priority footways.

Transport Secretary of State Philip Hammond rightly yesterday asked a scientist to report on whether as a society we need to be spending more to deal with severe winters (meaning airports as well as local roads). It’s fine starting that work now, but let’s make sure we don’t take any hasty decisions on this. Just about the worst time to decide whether you should spend more on preparing for winter is when it’s just snowed and we’ve had the lowest temperatures for 40 years (think of the Dangerous Dogs Act). The Government and councils should decide on any changes in winter planning in good time, preferably when it’s nice and warm outside and we can get the balance right.

Meanwhile, let’s all take some personal responsibility where we can, and be challenging but also reasonable in the expectations we have of Camden, or indeed any local authority at times when nature reasserts its power. As ward councillors we're keen to hear all views.

This represents Andrew Marshall's views and has not yet discussed with colleagues Roger Freeman and Don Williams!