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Winter roads and travel information

Important information - reduced salting network

Following a request from the Department for Transport to reduce salt usage by up to 50%, in the face of the continued national salt shortage, Hertfordshire Highways has taken measures to conserve salt supplies while keeping main roads passable.

Click here to see a map of the reduced salting route network.

National salt supply allocation is now being administered by the Department for Transport (DfT) and salt supplies are being directed to the areas of greatest need.

Until confirmation is received from the DfT that national supply levels have returned to normal, Hertfordshire County Council will continue salting a reduced network of A and B roads, plus roads that provide access to essential emergency services like hospitals and key fire stations.

The reduced network for salting has been developed following consultation with Hertfordshire Constabulary, Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, East of England Ambulance Service and the county council’s Passenger Transport Unit. We are also continuing to work closely with the police to ensure that essential public services continue running smoothly.

List of roads

A list of the roads that will be salted is contained in the Excel spreadsheet at the bottom of this page and on webmaps.

We will keep the situation under review. Should salt supply increase, we will look to return to treating our normal high priority network. In the meantime, we continue to explore all possibilities for augmenting our normal salt supplies. Even if the material we can find is not of a quality we could spread on the roads, if we can resume the salting of high priority footways or the refilling of salt bins, we will do so.

Stuart Pile, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, commented: "Since the start of the winter we have used over 12,000 tonnes of salt on Hertfordshire's roads and pavements. Hertfordshire currently has salt in stock and on order, and we hoped we would keep receiving sufficient salt to treat our entire main route network but, with conditions worse elsewhere in the country, we welcome the advice from the DfT, and recognise that those areas will be a priority for government. We need to conserve what we have and use it to best effect - in the weather conditions when it will be most useful, and on the roads where there is most traffic.

"This is a challenging time for all road users and highway authorities and we are reacting to this changing situation and doing what we can to keep roads open. Should salt supplies increase, we will look to return to treating our normal main roads. In the meantime we continue to explore all possibilities for supplementing our normal salt supplies."

Salting route searches

Hertfordshire’s updated salting routes and salt bin locations can be viewed on Webmaps. Use the link below to open a map showing all the salting routes in the county.

Salt bin locations can be displayed by expanding the Highways folder under the display menu on the map page.

Click here for Webmaps on Hertsdirect.org