EXTRA money is to be ploughed into dealing with Snow in north Oxfordshire after a “perfect storm” caused havoc before Christmas.

A council report into the impact of the snow concluded there was just too much snow and it came at the wrong time.

Cherwell district councillors have now agreed to spend £14,000 to improve their response to future snowfalls.

Banbury, Bicester and surrounding villages came to a standstill after 20cm (8in) of snow fell in one day the weekend before Christmas.

In the days that followed there was a catalogue of problems across the district. Snow was not cleared from council-run car parks, pavements were not gritted and bins were left unemptied.

Cherwell’s problems were compounded when staff turned up for work at the council’s depot at Thorpe Lane in Banbury – which houses street cleaning vehicles – and found the gate lock was frozen.

Once inside it then took nearly all day to clear the snow from the depot and staff carpark to get many of the street cleaning vehicles out, even with the help of a snow plough attached to a 4X4 vehicle.

Vehicles could not get out of the yard to collect any rock salt from Oxfordshire County Council’s Deddington depot until late afternoon, and staff were unable to help county council staff clear Banbury town centre until the Tuesday.

There were also problems at the Highfield depot in Bicester, while many other council staff were unable to get into work.

Those who did caused a traffic jam in Bodicote because of snow in the car park at the council’s headquarters. A Land Rover sent to clear the car park was damaged on speed humps.

The report recommends improvements to information on the council’s website after a big rise in calls from people trying to find out about rubbish collections.

It added: “The failure to catch up all collections due to the combination of snow, bank holidays and the availability of open outlets meant that some properties had to go four weeks between collections.

“Clearly this is not satisfactory.”

It also recommended the district council help the county council’s gritting of residential roads so its rubbish trucks could carry out more collections.

At a meeting of the council’s executive on Monday, George Reynolds, the member for the environment, said: “Clearly we had an unusual amount of snow for this area and it came an extremely awkward time. It’s not an excuse, but the reason I give to people is we had the perfect storm – thick snow and bank holidays, one after the other.”

Nicholas Turner, the executive member for customer service, suggested passing a bylaw to force businesses to clear snow from the front of their premises.

The executive agreed to buy a second snowplough for £2,000, and spend up to £12,000 on gritting equipment for the council depots, town centre streets and car park.

Shakur Ali, who owns the restaurant Jaflong, in Market Square, Bicester, was among the traders who were hit hard.

In December, he said: “Why don’t they look after the car parks?

“The car park is icy and slippery. Something should have been to clear it. They still charge people to park, so they should clear them.”

  • To read the full council report, click on the link below