Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting information relating to winter road gritting and salting activity carried out by your authority. This request relates to gritting and salting activity carried out on public highways maintained by your authority. If your authority does not have responsibility for winter road gritting, please confirm accordingly.
For the purposes of this request, please define winter in line with the meteorological winter, running from 1 December to the final day of February (28 or 29 February), as defined by the UK Met Office. If your authority records winter maintenance activity using a different operational definition or time period, please provide the data using your recorded definition and clearly state the date range covered.
Please provide the following information for each of the last three winter seasons:
Winter 2023/24
Winter 2024/25
Winter 2025/26 (to date)

1. Gritting activity
a) The total number of days on which gritting or salting was carried out.
23/24: 29
24/25: 45
25/26: 25
b) The total number of gritting or salting runs undertaken.
23/24: 180
24/25: 280
25/26: 140
c) The total distance of road treated through gritting or salting activity, measured in miles or kilometres.
23/24: 10,386km
24/25: 16,298km
25/26: 8,361km

2. Time and resource use (where recorded)
a) The total number of staff hours spent on gritting or salting activity.
23/24: 720
24/25: 1,120
25/26: 560
b) The total number of vehicle hours spent on gritting or salting activity.
23/24: 540
24/25: 840
25/26: 420

3. Costs and budgets
a) The total amount spent on gritting and salting operations in each winter period.
23/24: £158 682
24/25: £256,917
25/26: £9409 (as invoiced by the contractor to the end of December 2025).
b) The allocated budget for winter road gritting and salting for each winter period.
23/24: £418 660
24/25: £386 110
25/26: £395 950

4. Priority routes
Please confirm whether your authority operates designated priority or “snow routes” for winter maintenance.
The authority has both Primary and Secondary gritting routes

5. Network coverage
a) The total length of the highway network maintained by your authority (in miles or kilometres): 805km.
b) The approximate length or percentage of this network that is included within precautionary or priority gritting routes. Our primary routes are 306.2km and secondaries are 94km.

WBC Winter Maintenance Plan and the season period can be found here: https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/sites/wokingham/files/2025-12/Volume%2004%20HMMP%20-%20Winter%20Service%20Plan%202025_0.pdf