While you were sleeping...

Want to know what goes on behind the scenes at Hertfordshire Highways to keep the county's main roads moving during cold weather? Then check out this new two minute webcast - While you were sleeping... - about the county council's service.

Stuart Pile, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, said: "We chose 'While you were sleeping' as the title for the webcast because the vast majority of our salting operations are carried out at night. Salting our roads is gruelling work and during busy periods our crews can go out several times during the night, then will be out during the day clearing snow from pavements and restocking salt bins. It's fair to say that Hertfordshire Highways staff work round the clock during the winter to keep our roads moving."

Hertfordshire Highways' winter season starts on October 1 and runs to the end of April. Crews are on standby 24 hours a day. Over an average winter, our fleet of 61 vehicles will be deployed about 40 times, usually at night so that the roads have been treated before the morning rush hour. On every trip our crews take around two-and-a-half hours to treat over 42 per cent of Hertfordshire's roads - that's over 1,500 miles and the equivalent of going from John O Groats to Land's End and back.

Our gritters cover 58 different routes across the county, in priority order. Should snow fall, the roads are cleared in the same order:

• A roads but not motorways or trunk roads (the Highways Agency salt these roads)
• B roads and one entrance/exit to each village
• Major bus routes

Stuart added: "Running our winter service is a complex task so we can't fit every detail into a short film, but this webcast gives a good introduction to what we do to keep our main roads accessible during the winter. If you're interested in finding out more, please visit our winter service website on www.hertsdirect.org/salting where there are details ranging from how salt works to advice on clearing snow and ice."

You can follow Hertfordshire Highways’ salting decisions on twitter by going to www.twitter.com/Herts_Highways or you can sign up to the RSS feed by following the link to 'Salting decisions' on www.hertsdirect.org/salting