The following is information collated from Shropshire Council's website:

Winter Maintenance

Our main priorities are to:

• Make our roads safe for your use
• Minimise both delays and the financial impacts of winter weather

In other words, we aim to keep Shropshire moving, whatever the weather!

Keeping the roads clear during a cold snap involves a lot of different people, and is an expensive business, so we have to prioritise.

Gritting FAQs can be found here

Salting and Snow Clearance

Advice for clearing snow and ice from footways

• Do work from the footway at all times and towards oncoming traffic wherever possible
• Do place the snow on the verge or grassed areas
• Do place snow at edges of footways next to the road, this helps to form a safety barrier between cars and pedestrians
• Do put sand or ash down on cleared areas as it will provide grip
• Do use grit/salt from grit bins sparingly
• Do not obstruct accesses or footpaths with the snow
• Do not use grit/salt from highway grit bins on private property – that is theft
• Do not use a lot of salt – a teaspoon of salt per square metre will defrost ice patches
• Do not lift too much snow at one time. Compacted snow can be very heavy
• Do not use hot water to melt ice or snow – it may refreeze to form “black ice”
• Do not work in blizzard conditions

When working outside

• Wrap up warm
• Wear suitable footwear
• Do not work in the dark
• Beware of hypothermia and wind chill effects
• Wear light coloured clothing and a reflective coat if available.

The law on clearing snow and ice

There is no law stopping you from clearing snow and ice on the footway outside your property, pathways to your property or public spaces. This includes both public roads and footways.

If an accident did occur, it’s highly unlikely that you would be sued as long as you:

• Are careful
• Use common sense to make sure that you do not make the footway or pathway clearly more dangerous than before

People using areas affected by snow and ice also have responsibility to be careful themselves.

Is your local salt bin running low?

If so, please let us know. We aim to respond to your request as soon as we reasonably can, but we are not able to give a definite response time due to the amount of requests we receive, and adverse weather conditions.  Go to FixMyStreet, enter the postcode close to the salt bin in question and click "Go".  Then click on the button "Report a problem here".  Scroll down in the left hand pane to locate the category "Winter Maintenance".  Click "Continue" and enter the relevant information.

You can use salt from your local salt bin to treat pavements and roads around where you live – find your nearest by zooming in on your area on our gritting route map.

There are approximately 1000 salt bins in the county and they've been placed in strategic positions. It's unlikely additional bins will be added in the near future.

So what do we do?

Every year, when the wintry weather arrives, together with our partners, we go out to grit the county’s roads, keeping them safe and accessible during spells of ice and snow to keep Shropshire moving in even the worst of the weather. 

There are hundreds of miles of roads in Shropshire and thousands of journeys to be made, so it’s important that we keep as many roads open as possible at all times. Throughout the year there’s a host of people working, sometimes through the night, to help you get where you need to be, even when temperatures plummet.

Together with our contractors, we keep a weather-eye on temperatures throughout the winter – but how do we decide when to send the gritters out?

Firstly, we need reliable information.

We subscribe to weather forecasting services from The Met Office.

From October to April we get:

• A morning summary
• A 24-hour forecast each morning.
• A five-day forecast each afternoon.
• Ice prediction graphs each afternoon.
• Regular updates.

We also subscribe to a 24-hour consultancy service from The Met Office.

All that data helps us make informed decisions, but we also have inspectors on call that can go out and see the situation on the ground. These are officers with years of experience between them who know when to react to local conditions and deploy more resources as required.

When all the indicators are in place, we’ll send the trucks out from our five depots for what we call ‘pre-salting’. This is a preventative measure to stop ice forming on the roads.

In extreme circumstances, we’re aiming to remove ice that’s already formed, and that’s called post-salting.

Where do we grit?

Keeping the roads clear is an expensive business so we have to prioritise.  To see where we grit, click here. This is what is known as the "defined network".

Snow ploughing

We undertake ploughing in priority order, beginning with the defined network. At least one main access route to towns and large villages will be cleared as soon as practicable. We also deploy snow blowers to remove heavy snowfall during severe weather.

What vehicles do we use?

The gritters are owned by us and located at our five highways depots.

In addition, many contractors and farmers have snow clearing equipment. Our divisional officers deploy this supplementary equipment following heavy snowfall in rural areas.

Our contractor, Ringway, has sufficient drivers to operate all of the above routes 24 hours a day, and additional staff available to deal with other winter maintenance duties as required, eg clearing snow from footways.

Gritter names

We have 25 gritters operating across the county to keep our roads as clear and safe as possible over the winter months. Each has a name, following a public vote in late 2020.

Gritters named following the public vote 

• Snowcial Distancing
• Spreddie Flintoff
• David Plowie 
• Snow Patrol
• Gritty Gritty Bang Bang 
• Snow Be Gone Kenobi 
• Gritty McGritface 
• Spready Mercury 
• Snowvid-19 
• Grit the Road Jack
• Ready Salted
• Walter the Salter 
• Captain Tom 
• Slush the Magic Wagon 
• True Grit 
• Gritter Thunberg
• Usain Salt
• Ice Ice Baby 
• Gritney Spears 
• Super Spreader 

Gritters named after local people

• Zac Oliver
• Jack Edwards
• Charlie Desmond 
• The Harry Johnson Trust
• Percy Mullaly 

Charlie Desmond suffered from muscular dystrophy and passed away in 2015 at the age of 15. He was described as ‘such a brave boy’. 

Jack Edwards from Cleobury Mortimer passed away in 2016 after a battle with leukaemia. He was described as ‘an inspiration to the local community’. 

Zac Oliver from Broseley was diagnosed with a rare strain of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in May 2018. An appeal raised £500,000 to send Zac to Philadelphia for life-saving treatment. 

The Harry Johnson Trust was established in November 2014 following the death of seven year old Harry in July of that year. Harry died following a nine-month fight with double-hit non-Hodgkins lymphoma. 

Percy Mullaly was a much-loved and long-serving car park attendant at our Shirehall headquarters. He sadly passed away in 2020.