Agenda item

Further to Minute No. 44 of the meeting of the Improving Places Select Commission held on 14th January, 2015, consideration was given to a report, presented by the Highways Network Manager and the Principal Waste Officer, providing an update on the Council’s response to the severe weather during the Christmas and New Year holiday period in late December 2014 and early January 2015 and setting out the actions which have been taken to improve the Council’s response to similar weather conditions in the future.

The Select Commission’s debate highlighted the following issues:-

-          the accuracy of the daily weather forecasts available to local authorities;

-          the telemetry provided on the road-gritting vehicles, recording the routes which have been gritted;

-          the hand-salting teams had not been on stand-by duty during the Christmas and New Year holiday period in 2014/15, but will be on duty during the holiday period in 2015/16; Members acknowledged that the salting teams had undertaken their work to a high standard in exceptional circumstances;

-          the possibility of pre-salting residential and estate roads, prior to snowfall and/or ice;

-          the impact upon waste collection; crews being deployed in areas in which it was deemed safe to travel; some waste collection rounds had been halted because of the severe weather conditions, with some roads being inaccessible because of icy conditions; the use of the recovery plan to clear the backlog of household waste collection; the Bartec system which provides management information about the waste collection vehicles and routes and also provided real-time information for contact centre staff about the backlog of missed collections;

-          ensuring effective communication with the public; use of the Council’s Internet website and of social media (eg: Twitter, etc.); the proposed re-fresh of the website pages and the use of banners to guide website users to specific information; publication of a bespoke web page for winter maintenance;  publication of leaflets for distribution to the general public (eg: at the Rotherham Show);

-          better communications with the bus companies, about the impact of severe weather upon bus services and routes;

-          the criteria and protocol for the provision of roadside salt bins (there are more than 300 bin locations throughout the Rotherham Borough area); the use of the snow warden scheme, in partnership with Parish Councils (eg: Wickersley) and with volunteer members of the public (25 individuals are already registered); engaging with the community via newsletters and community groups (eg: Rotherfed);

-          regular communication with and updates for Elected Members and with snow wardens, during the severe weather;

-          communications and a single officer lead; clearer messages on the Council’s website about priorities; use of e mail alerts;

-          sharing information about Winter maintenance with Elected Members at workshops, with the Area Assemblies and with the Parish Council network.

Resolved:- (1) That the report be received and its contents noted.

(2) That the report be forwarded to Commissioner Manzie for further consideration, who shall be recommended to approve the proposed changes affecting Winter maintenance services, the Council’s Internet website and communications, as detailed in section 7.4 of the submitted report.