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Nick Harvey MPStanding up for North Devon since 1992 |
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DCC AGREES TO REVIEW WINTER SERVICE OPERATIONS
February 25, 2010 3:13 PM
Following lobbying by Nick Harvey, Devon County Council has given an undertaking to review winter service operations in North Devon.
After a considerable volume of complaints about how DCC handled gritting during the extreme weather, Chris McCarthy, Executive Director of Environment, Economy and Culture explained: "I would like to inform you that the County Council Scrutiny Committee have agreed to review the winter service operations of the county and make recommendations for how they would like to see the service changed for future winters, together with any cost implications."
Nick responds: "This is excellent news my mailbag was inundated with complaints about how our outlying villages were cut off. Clearly DCC needs to assess its priorities to ensure the vulnerable are not left isolated. The vast majority of the roads were simply just left to the elements."
By its own admission DCC could not cope with the cold spell, Chris McCarthy says: "The situation that you raise was the situation that existed on over 75 per cent of Devon's road network where capacity in terms of personnel, plant and finance were not available to undertake this extensive task.
"In addition, there was a national salt shortage, which meant that in Devon we had to carefully manage this resource to ensure that the precautionary network was operational.
"The way in which DCC's resources were deployed, sometimes on a 24 hour operation and over an extended period, was in maintaining 1,700 miles (21 per cent of the total network) of usable network, town centres, emergency service and grit bins so that core services could be maintained in what was considered to be the worst weather scenario for over 30 years."
"I look forward to this review's recommendations and in the meantime will be feeding in the results of my rural parish survey on this issue," concludes Nick Harvey.
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