I WOULD like to clarify a few points raised in Mr Colman's letter ("Where were the gritters?", December 30).

City of York Council has a fleet of ten gritters, all of which were in operation on Tuesday, December 27 and on Wednesday, December 28, the day Mr Coleman refers to.

The gritting teams covered all of the designated gritting routes twice on Tuesday evening commencing at 4pm and twice again at 6am on Wednesday morning, in response to the severe weather forecast provided by the Met Office.

Over the two day period, they covered the 360 kilometres of designated routes a total of eight times, using 320 hours of labour.

The council is committed to ensuring that the city's routes are as safe as possible, and has recently started using a new form of salt, called Safecote, which is even more effective.

In addition, the authority grits a much higher percentage of its highway network than most other areas - approximately 50 per cent.

However, gritting does not return wintry roads to pre-snow and ice conditions and we would always advise motorists to take extra care in bad weather.

Mike Tavener,

Engineering Consultancy,

City of York Council,

Back Swinegate,

York.

Updated: 09:50 Monday, January 02, 2006