The Department for Infrastructure has said that it does "not have the resources" to provide gritting on all of the roads where schools are located.
He said that he wrote to the Department and was concerned to hear that gritting would only be provided to roads carrying more than 1,500 vehicles a day, or those with “difficult topography” carrying over 1,000 a day. “I have responded to the Permanent Secretary calling for an urgent review of this policy so that our schools don’t end up in this difficult position in future. The department has a duty to do everything in their power to prevent injury and keep people safe in these conditions and I don’t think providing gritting services to our schools is to much to ask.”
A DfI spokesperson said: “The Department delivers a winter service programme to mitigate, as far as is reasonably possible, the effects of adverse winter weather. At times of ice and snow we deploy around 300 staff and a fleet of 130 gritters - working round the clock when needed - to salt the 107 routes that make up the 7,000km of the network on the salting schedule.