Gritting roads and pavements

Latest

Friday 3 February – With snow forecast, the gritters will be out on our secondary routes, tonight. Gritting over the last three nights means there's plenty of salt on primary routes, already.

For the latest updates over the weekend, see our esccroads Twitter feed.

Gritting decisions

Gritting decisions are made at least once a day and more often during periods of severe weather.

Time of update	Gritting zone	Action	Time
3 Feb, 2.14pm	Whole county - secondary routes	Gritting	7pm

See earlier gritting decisions

Map of gritting zones (PDF, 155KB)

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Deciding which roads to grit

The busiest primary roads are gritted first. These include the major A and B roads, and about 75% of C roads.

Map of gritting routes in East Sussex

We give priority to roads leading to:

hospitals, fire, ambulance and police stations
public transport stations
main shopping areas and schools
difficult sites (very steep hills etc).

Other gritting routes and exceptional conditions

During snow and very severe icy conditions we treat an additional 130 miles of secondary roads.

Requests to add roads to our gritting network are added to a list which we regularly review. Our existing budget means that we are currently unable to add more roads, but to have a road added to the list, please contact your local Highways Contact Centre.

Deciding when to grit

We send our gritters out before frost and ice are formed by freezing temperatures.

We schedule the gritting process based on the weather forecast. Where possible, we try to avoid the morning and evening rush hours.

When will my road be gritted?

If your road is not on our primary or secondary gritting routes, it will not be gritted. Minor rural and urban roads are left to thaw naturally.

We use a small size of rock salt grit which is extremely light, not very dense and is unlikely to cause damage to vehicles.

Pavements

We don't have the resources to routinely grit footpaths or pavements. Hand gritting pavements in main shopping areas and busy urban areas is carried out if staff and equipment is available.

We encourage householders and businesses to help themselves by clearing snow and ice from public areas near their properties. We also encourage people to help neighbours who may not be able to clear snow and ice themselves.

You'll find some useful common sense advice online to help you get started, such the best time of day to treat, how much salt to use, and possible salt substitutes:

Directgov – Clearing snow and ice from pavements yourself