WE feel that your piece on salt bins (August 31) was not fair or balanced and excluded important context that would have given a more complete picture to your readers. You quoted in multiple our critics but barely addressed our rationale. To be clear, Oxfordshire County Council has pledged to provide one-tonne bags of salt for parish councils to help keep salt bins stocked up this winter.

This will help local communities take greater control of arrangements for salting minor public roads and walkways in icy weather and ensure local supplies in the event that national stocks become restricted. It will also free up county council resources to concentrate on the essential work of gritting main roads across Oxfordshire.

As well as supplying a free one-tonne bag to each parish council, every county council-supplied salt bin across Oxfordshire will be filled before the start of winter. Responsibility for keeping these topped up will then rest with the parish councils.

It absolutely needs to be understood that the salt in local grit bins is intended for use on minor, residential roads and pathways which are not part of the county council’s priority network of main routes across the county. The simple reality is that no highways authority in the UK has the resources to grit its entire road network — far less every stretch of pavement.

Allowing parish councils control of a significant initial supply of salt should help local communities to help themselves and is a Big Society solution for a problem frequently experienced by highways authorities up and down the country. Many parish councils have told us they welcome this proposal.

In the past we have been criticised about local salt bins running low during prolonged periods of very cold weather – which inevitably happens when we have to concentrate our resources on our core work of salting main roads.

The basic idea behind the new proposal is that it will mean more local bins are stocked up when they are needed the most. I think most people would welcome that.

This was an idea that you welcomed in an editorial (Oxford Mail, July 5). Your about-turn in the editorial on August 31 is breathtaking.

Cllr RODNEY ROSE Cabinet Member for Transport Oxfordshire County Council

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Oxford Mail did not advocate the community having to pay for grit