Road salting

As the highway authority, Hampshire County Council is responsible for maintaining 5,200 miles of publicly maintainable surfaced roads during the winter period.

We are not responsible for maintaining motorways and certain major A-roads, historically referred to as trunk roads. These roads are maintained by National Highways. We are also not responsible for maintaining ‘unadopted’ private roads.

Priority order for road salting

All carriageways forming part of the public highway network are allocated to one of three groupings.

Priority One Routes

We routinely treat the Priority One routes in advance of any forecasted ice, frost or snow. We carry out this treatment ahead of the forecasted conditions to ensure the most effective results.

Priority One routes cover approximately 1,800 miles, which is approximately 35% of the road network and requires 44 gritting vehicles to treat.

Priority One routes carry the majority of all traffic. These include all ‘A’ class roads that the County Council is responsible for, other heavily used roads, access roads to emergency services establishments, major bus routes, large schools and sites classed as locally critical infrastructure by the County Council’s Emergency Planning team.

Priority Two and Community Routes

Priority Two and Community Routes include single routes to villages, schools, and other emergency and public services not already treated.

Priority Two and Community Routes may be treated when there is prolonged and persistent frost, ice or snow which is expected to continue. This occurs only after clearing Priority One routes and when there is enough time to treat them without affecting any of the Priority One routes.

Priority Three Routes

Priority Three roads include all other roads.

Priority Three roads may be treated following significant snowfall but only once Priority One, Priority Two and Community Routes have been cleared.

When we won't usually salt

No matter how accurate the weather forecast, there are some situations where we do not routinely salt the network prior to icy conditions because this would be less effective:

• when rain is followed by rapidly clearing skies, salting will normally start soon after the rain has stopped (to avoid the salt being washed away). Sometimes temperatures can fall rapidly following rainfall and the wet roads may well freeze before we have been able to treat them
• rush hour snowfall. When rain turns to snow coinciding with the rush hour, early salting would not normally take place as it could be washed away and traffic congestion can impede the progress of the gritters

Footways and footpaths

Busy pedestrian routes will only be salted at times of prolonged freezing temperatures and when there is persistent frost or ice.

Other footways and footpaths are not salted.

Cycle tracks

Cycleways and cycle tracks which are part of the road are treated as designated by the road priority.

Cycleways and cycle tracks which are part of the footway network are treated as the footway treatment designation.