Council confirms grit bins will be re-filled

A council says it is attempting to re-fill grit bins after initially saying they would not be filled until the cold weather spell is over.

Derbyshire County Council posted on social media on Thursday morning about "receiving lots of requests" to re-fill gritting bins, but staff were busy gritting the roads.

The authority updated the post at 16:00 GMT to say its officers were now topping up the roadside bins and urged people to let them know of any that were empty.

Some grit bins are not owned by the county council and are the responsibility of district and town councils, the local authority said.

Grit bins and salt heaps are provided at various points, usually in villages or on untreated roads, so residents can help keep roads and pavements in their area free from ice.

As the cold snap continues, the council posted on Facebook at 08:00 it was receiving the requests for salt bin re-fills and "until this spell of cold weather is over, we won't be able to get to them as the crews who do the gritting are the people who re-fill them".

"We have our crews working round the clock, with two shifts of 12 hours each," the authority added.

"But we only have so many gritters and they can only be in one place at a time.

"Gritting routes are taking us longer because we are putting more grit down, which means the lorries have to go back to their depots halfway through to re-fill."

Later, a new statement was posted on Facebook, to say teams were out re-filling grit bins and grit piles as "quickly as they can" - and urged residents to let them know where a re-fill was needed.

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