Road Salting - when and where we treat roads with salt

Map showing which roads are treated with salt

• Use our interactive maps to see which roads we salt

Live updates via Twitter - when and where road salting is taking place

• Hantsconnect - Hampshire County Council Twitter page

Priority order for road salting

Roads are treated in a priority order, in line with national guidelines.

We routinely treat only the first priority routes in the event of forecasted ice, frost or snow and we carry out this treatment in advance of the forecasted conditions to achieve the most effective results. In this way we focus our efforts on enabling the safe movement of traffic on the first priority roads as far as possible . Lower priority roads are not treated in this way. It is important that drivers take extra care during severe conditions.It should not be assumed that all roads have been treated.

• First priority routes are 'A' class roads, access roads to emergency services establishments and to areas of high traffic concentration, and other heavily used roads. First priority cover approximately 25% of the road network but these carry around 85% of the traffic.

• Second priority routes are single accesses to villages, to schools, to emergency and to other public services not already treated. These are only treated following prologed freezing conditions.

• Community Routes  are routes to all other Hampshire controlled schools and community facilities such as Health Centres and treatment will generally only be carried out during periods of prolonged and persistent frost,ice or snow which are expected to continue.

Circumstances which may prevent road salting from taking place

No matter how accurate the weather forecast, there are some situations where we do not salt the network prior to icy conditions because this would be ineffective:

• When rain is followed by rapidly clearing skies, salting will normally start soon after the rain has stopped (to avoid the salt being washed away). Sometimes temperatures can fall rapidly folowing rainfall and the wet roads may well freeze before we have been able to treat them.

• Rush hour snowfall. When rain turns to snow coinciding with the rush hour, early salting would not take place as it would be washed away and gritters can often not make progress due to traffic congestion.

Pavements and footpaths (footways)

Busy pedestrian routes will only be salted at times of prolonged sub-zero temperatures and when there is persistent frost or ice. Other pavements and footpaths are not salted.

For tips on clearing snow and ice from pavements yourself, see the snow code on the Directgov website:
Clearing snow and ice from pavements yourself (Directgov)

Cycletracks

• Cycletracks which are part of the road are treated as designated by the road priority

• Cycletracks which are part of the footway network are treated as the footway treatment designation

More about road salting

• Facts and figures
• How road salt works