CUMBRIA County Council say they are ready for the winter weather after announcing plans to tackle hazardous roads.

After last year’s extreme conditions, the county council has put formal measures in place to supply parish councils with salt and grit if required, so extra gritting on top of the treatment programme already delivered by their own highways teams to local roads, can be done by communities themselves.

But not everybody agrees with the strategy.

South Lakeland District Councillor Ian Stewart believes parishes should be given grit stores before the cold weather hits.

He said: “One of the major problems last year was the time taken between gritting being necessary and the grit being ordered and made available to local councils.

“Town and parish councils need to know now whether they will be getting salt over the winter so that they can work out how much they need, make arrangements for storage and recruit the volunteers necessary to do the gritting.

"And the county council needs to order extra salt for them now – experience has shown that it is too late to order salt once the winter is here.

“ We don’t want to see the chaos and confusion that happened last year repeated.”

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, is also sceptical of the county council’s plans.

He added: “This is where elderly communities and shopping locations suffer.

“However, here in South Lakeland, the local area committee have invested in 200 new grit bins to help things.”

In response, Councillor Tony Markley, Cumbria County Council’s cabinet member for highways, said measures were in place to help keep the county moving if the cold weather hit.

He added: “The severity of last winter highlighted just how vital our winter maintenance programme is and supplying the parishes with grit proved to be a successful example of good partnership working.”

And went on: “However, it is not always as simple as getting grit to the parishes as most of them do not have the storage facilities to store tons of grit, so our solution is proactive rather than reactive.”

Meanwhile, The Highways Agency North West Team has invested in 28 gritting vehicles and two snow blowers should bad weather hit the area.

They are responsible for the M6, A66 and key parts of the A590 and A595 in the county. The agency unveiled its new machines last weeK and say they are working with the Met Office using roadside ice prediction stations to help combat ice and snow.

The new vehicles and blowers cost £3 million as part of a £45m national investment by the Highways Agency in its winter service vehicles.

Long range forecast:

While part of the country is being battered by snowstorms, South Lakeland should avoid the worst of it say experts.

Looking at the forecast up to Christmas, a spokeswoman for the Met Office, said: “It will be quite cold in South Cumbria over the next couple of weeks, but the snow should affect the East of the country, with the only real risk in the North West looking like it will only be in the highest regions.

“The forecast is that it will stay at around four degrees until mid to late December, but that it should warm up slightly as Christmas approaches.”