Snow in Theatre Street, SW11Perhaps it’s just that I love using the snow picture.  Perhaps it’s because I rather liked the snow.  Perhaps because it’s a bit of trumpet blowing.

Whatever it is, I’ve just been reading the council’s report on their response to the recent weather and I’m still impressed with what we achieved.

The task was enormous, as the report states “if all the footpaths in Wandsworth were to be laid end to end, they would reach Prague.”  Let the council’s Operational Services department did a stirling job in keeping the roads and pavements clear.

The gritters were out from 3pm on Sunday 1st February (before the snow started) and continued until Saturday 7th February.  At their peak the eight gritters were using salt at a rate of 500 tonnes a day and by the time they had finished all “the Principal routes had been gritted 6 times, all Borough roads 5 times, all footway priority areas 3 times and all borough road footways once.”

I cannot deny I still get exasperated at the complaints from this period. It was a one in 20 year event and we still responded remarkably well and far better than many other boroughs, one of our neighbours (a prize if you guess which) had run out of grit on the first day!

I have said this before and will say it again, congratulations to all the Operational Services staff.

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