Its snow joke!

Ive been around Morley this morning to check out how estate roads are coping with the weather. I was heartened to see a gritter rolling along Scotchman Lane and I have asked for assurances that the gritter will systematically work its way across the major routes initially and then into the main spine routes through the estates.

The Harwell Estate in Churwell seem pretty bad along with the the estate road around the Sandmeads but the Ibbotson Estate along with some of the Birdie Estate seems to have coped reasonably well. I was particularly impressed with some of the roads of Peacock Green where residents have worked together to clear their cul-de-sacs to allow cars to get in and out of the estate. They are to be congratulated.

We are told that this is the worst period of snow in the North for over 20 years and knowing what to do in the future is one of the challenges we must face. Do we gear up, as Canada does, for substantial snow every winter and have gritters on standby and grit mountains stored and waiting? What if the snow does not materialise and we have expensive assets standing around with nothing to do? Can we predict what the future will bring with the variations global warning imposes on us? I suspect we need to accept these challenges will occur more frequently and put an increased but sensible budget aside for such future events. Certainly the City Council did increase this budget last year and we still have enough grit to last for the foreseeable future, but stressed budgets in the future will mean tough but sensible decisions need to be taken.

We will also need to explore the community option and the opportunity to mobilise capacity within the community to find a local solution to these challenges.