Fewer Lancashire roads could be gritted in £84m funding cuts

Roads that will no longer be gritted under proposed budget cuts will be decided after a risk-based review

Fewer roads may be gritted in winter as part of a savings plan to be considered by Lancashire County Council.

The authority's Conservative cabinet will decide next week whether to approve £84m of spending cuts.

Cabinet members will be asked to approve 32 different day-to-day savings measures to ease a projected budget shortfall of £87m.

The Labour opposition group has warned it could mean another period of austerity.

If the gritting changes get the green light, the 45 primary routes that are currently treated would be cut to 41, based on a risk-based review of the gritting network, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Those roads that will no longer be gritted under the proposal cannot be identified until the planned review has taken place, but would not come into effect until the 2023/24 financial year.

Councillor Alan Vincent said highways bosses were content the authority could still "safely grit the roads that need doing by just changing the routes around a little bit".

He added: "There's always some risk attached to it, but they've basically said to us that they think these are the roads that we absolutely need to do the winter gritting on.

"You could extend it and grit every road in Lancashire - but we couldn't possibly either do [that] or have the cash to do it. So we're going to have to do the best we can with the resources that we have available."