I NOTED the familiar cry from Councillor Richard Toon, chairman of the county highways and transportation committee, that very little money is available to sand and grit the roads this winter. We are informed priorities will be given to trunk roads and motorways.

If you live on a minor road or estate, tough. You will have to take your chance on arriving at your destination in one piece.

The curious thing is we have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on traffic-calming measures, painted hundreds of miles of road for so-called cycle tracks, we are paying higher road taxes, higher duty on fuel, we have scrapped most of the road building programme nationally, and the number of cars increases year by year, providing more money to the Exchequer. But we can't afford to grit the roads adequately.

We do get a few words of wisdom from Councillor Toon, who says "salting the road only works when there is enough traffic to keep it moving" and "a freshly-gritted road will be much slippier than one treated earlier where traffic has been able to spread the salt."

I hope the good councillor's words will provide some consolation to the motorists of Blackburn and Hyndburn as they slither to work this winter.

JAMES SAUL, Deganwy Avenue, Blackburn.

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