Ready for action...
When the grit hits the fan


How your county council keeps Derbyshire moving in extreme weather

Ready, steady, grit

We’ve been busy behind the scenes making sure all our plans are in place so we’re ready for action if bad weather hits...

Great gritters of Derbyshire

We’ve got 37 gritters and all can be fitted with snowploughs. They’re on standby 24/7.

When we grit

Our official gritting season is between October and April and during this time we get specialist weather forecasts to help us monitor road surface temperatures. We use these temperatures as a guide to help us make gritting decisions.

We’ve also got seven weather stations dotted around Derbyshire and these give us more precise details of weather conditions in specific parts of the county. Temperatures in the rural High Peak, for example, maybe very different to lower-lying urban areas.

The decision to grit is made when temperatures dip to below freezing, although at -5Co grit is less effective. Most of the time we can plan several hours in advance where and when we’re going to go out and grit.

But if the weather changes unexpectedly we can dispatch our gritters out within the hour.

Where we grit

We grit around half of the roads we look after. We can’t grit every road, we only have a certain amount of resources – cash, vehicles and staff – and some roads are unsuitable for our gritters to travel on.

Have a sneak peak at what it's like to be a gritter driver clearing a path for the county:

Gritter driver Gerald O'Brien shows us what it's like on his gritting route

Below is an interactive view of one of our gritting routes in a small area of Chesterfield - Scroll down to see the red lines (primary routes), pink lines (secondary routes) and yellow lines (tertiary routes).

Primary routes

  • A roads, heavily-used B roads, plus routes to hospitals, emergency services bases and main bus routes. We have 26 primary routes which cover around 1,000 miles. We grit these routes during the day and night and will pre-treat them before bad weather hits. We’ll continue to grit around the clock on these routes if we need to.

Secondary routes

  • include smaller village roads, lesser-used bus routes and some residential roads. There are 22 of these routes and make up around 500 miles.

Tertiary routes

  • when there’s widespread snow and all other priority roads have been gritted we may treat tertiary routes. There are around 150 miles of these types of road – mostly rural.

Beast from the East

Last winter was exceptionally bad – the worst for a decade. Extreme arctic weather saw snow and ice cling to the county’s roads for several weeks.

Our gritters took to the roads 4,404 times, spreading grit over a total 160,125 miles. This was twice as many compared to the previous winter.

In one weekend alone we gritted 287 routes with 2,000 tonnes of grit – the equivalent of 100 large lorry loads.

Our care staff braved the blizzards to get out to vulnerable people who count on them - always keeping a smile on their face.

Grit and bear it

Grit is kept at our five highways depots.

This year we have 27,000 tonnes in store. In an average winter we spread around 13,000 tonnes.

Last winter, we used 32,000 tonnes.
We spent £4.2m gritting last year – compared to £2.9m the year before.

Bin around the world and I..I..I can't find my grit bins...


Around the county there are 2,053 grit bins, some owned by us and some by Derbyshire’s town and parish councils.

If you know of a grit bin that needs refilling, let us know here

Volunteering to help keep their communities running

Each year we ask our town and parish councils and other community groups to rally residents to help clear snow and ice in their local areas as part of our Snow Warden Scheme.

Each council is given a free delivery of up to a tonne of bagged grit, training and advice on how to clear snow and ice safely and specialist weather reports.

In return we ask that snow warden teams clear snow and ice from their local pavements, report local weather conditions through our website, be our eyes and ears on the ground looking out for vulnerable residents, co-ordinate volunteers to clear snow and distribute grit and report empty grit bins.

Last winter 71 snow warden teams signed up and 62 schools also volunteered to clear snow from outside their school gates.

Fantastic farmers and contractors

Ready to go...on standby for when bad weather hits

We also run a scheme with farmers and other contractors with ploughing and gritting equipment to clear snow on our behalf in more rural areas and places not on main gritting routes.

Keep in the know
when it starts to snow

If you want to know more about all things snow and staying safe in winter then check out our comprehensive information online at derbyshire.gov.uk/snow

You can find out about:

  • gritting routes and the latest gritting activity
  • where to find your nearest grit bin and how to report it when it’s empty
  • school closures

When really bad weather hits you can keep up to date with the latest by following our social media channels Twitter and Facebook

Top Built with Shorthand

This is only a preview. Start publishing!

Enquire now

This is only a preview.
Start publishing!

Subscribe now to begin publishing your Shorthand stories. All plans offer flexible hosting options, best-practice training & online support.

Enquire now
As used by
  • BBC
  • Dow Jones
  • ADWEEK
  • Sky News
  • Honda
  • Save The Children
  • World Health Organisation
  • University of Houston
  • RELX