IN depots around Oxfordshire huge piles of salt are already being stockpiled to protect Oxfordshire’s roads when temperatures plummet.

As county council managers prepare for winter, about 12,000 tonnes of salt has been stockpiled.

A Winter in Oxfordshire campaign has begun, to encourage residents to consider how well prepared they are for this winter’s cold spells.

Salt from Cheshire is being stockpiled at a number of depots, including those in Drayton, near Abingdon, and at the city council’s Marsh Road depot, off Cowley Road in Oxford.

Deputy leader of the county council Rodney Rose said: “We want to highlight the importance of being prepared – the council undertakes a huge amount of work to keep people safe during winter.

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“Being prepared for winter means everything from gritting roads and thinking about floods to making sure the old lady next door has heating and supplies if she can’t get out.”

This year’s campaign includes encouraging residents to prepare for flooding, and the county council has invested about £750,000 so far this year on a number of flood prevention measures.

The council says is it ready to cope with extreme weather, including ice on the roads and flooding.

About 43 per cent of the county’s road network is salted when conditions demand it – comparable to similar local authorities and includes all A-roads and B-roads and some C-roads.

County council spokesman Paul Smith said the council gritted “the busiest roads” and added: “This means our gritters routinely cover more than 1,200 miles of road, which is approximately the distance from London to Iceland or London to Morocco.

“We’ve got more than 12,000 tonnes of salt in stock, the same as in previous winters “The council has the ability to put out up to 30 gritters at any one time when cold temperatures lead to frost or snowfall. Gritters can be fitted with snowploughs very quickly.”

At the start of the year Botley Road and Abingdon Road in Oxford had to be closed because of flooding and Mr Rose said the council was working with the Environment Agency on a proposal to pipe water underneath Botley Road if it flooded again.

Mr Rose added: “If we pump flood water from Bullstake stream on to Botley Road then we have to shut it.

“But it’s not just the Botley Road and Abingdon Road that could flood – West Oxfordshire suffered badly in 2007 and we have to think about the whole county.”

Mr Smith said the council has run a series of roadshows to advise residents on home flood protection.

And between January and September it has spent more than £560,600 on highway and land drainage improvement work around the county.

There has also been an investment of £193,000 in cleaning and repairing damaged underground pipes.

The council is working with landowners who own land next to streams, rivers and brooks to encourage them to complete maintenance work to reduce the risk of flooding.

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