Winter roads and travel information

Working to keep your roads safe in winter

Hertfordshire County Council's Winter Maintenance service is co-ordinated across the county by Hertfordshire Highways, who are on 24-hour stand-by during the season.

The actual salting, also known as gritting or spreading, is carried out by a fleet of salting lorries. Salt is used to help prevent ice forming on the roads. Over an average winter, they will be deployed about 40 times, usually at night. On every trip they treat over 42% of Hertfordshire's entire road network; about 2,500km (1,553 miles).

They cover 58 different routes across the county, in priority order:

• A roads but not motorways or trunk roads
• B roads and one entrance/exit to each village
• Major Bus routes

Should snow fall the roads will be cleared in the same priority order.

For more information about our service, please click the links below.

Salting routes

Hertfordshire County Council has used feedback from local councillors and district and borough councils to modify the network of routes it salts in 2010. The new network we have created is designed to cope better with local needs such as walking routes leading to train stations, local shops, and other priorities for local people.

What the colours of roads in maps mean

Our updated salting routes and salt bin locations can be viewed on Webmaps. Use the link below to open a page where you can insert your postcode, street or village and search for the nearest saltbins and gritting routes. Once the map has loaded, salt bin locations will be displayed as yellow boxes. The routes will be shown in two different colours, which show:

• the precautionary routes treated pre-freezing (red)
• the routes that will be done subsequent to continuous lower temperatures (blue)

The explanations of what they mean can be found by clicking on the 'Highways' folder, and then on the box with lines in it next to 'Salting Routes'

New salt bins

Following discussions at the Highways and Transport Cabinet Panels on 5th July 2011 and 8th September 2011 and subsequent discussions with the Executive Member for Highways and Transport, it was agreed the number of salt bins on the publicly maintainable highway would not be increased beyond their current level of approximately 1,000. As such, we can no longer accept requests for new salt bins on the public highway. Should people or communities wish to provide salt bins (and salt) on areas not on the highway, they are free to do so, obviously provided that they have permission from the landowner.

The council has launched a number self help initiatives more details of which can be found here.

Salt from salt bins can be used for salting and clearing snow from the pavement outside your property or business but should not be used for salting private driveways, footpaths, forecourts or other areas that are not part of the public highway. Salt bins are placed for public use at known trouble spots on the highway, and theft from these bins may compromise the safety of others as well as being a criminal offence. The average cost of refilling a salt bin is £45 and each bin can be refilled as many as ten times during a typical winter. Refilling all the salt bins on our roads takes between a week and two weeks to complete.

Live salting information

You can find out when we salt Hertfordshire's roads as it happens online or via Twitter (twitter.com/herts_highways) or RSS Feed direct to your computer or mobile phone. Please click the Salting Decisions link for more information.