PENDLE councillors have hit out at highway budget cutbacks which will see salt bins reduced by more than a third this winter.

With one of the worst winters for many years widely forecasted, Liberal Democrat councillors say the Labour-led Lancashire County Council is putting lives at risk by slashing the number of the borough's salt deposits from 345 to around 200.

Coun David Whipp believes that if the predictions of an extremely cold winter this year prove correct, the area's particularly hilly terrain could cause misery for elderly residents in Barnoldswick, Earby and rural West Craven.

He said: "This is a drastic and dangerous reduction. These yellow boxes give residents and travellers a 'do it yourself' option for tackling icy roads and pavements. They are an essential feature of winter life in hilly places like Pendle.

"The numbers and positions of the salt bins has evolved over the years to provide the best possible coverage. The county council's actions are arbitrary and high-handed. They don't seem to care about elderly people trapped in their own homes because the pavements are too slippery, or the motorists unable to travel on untreated streets.

He added: "They claim to have done an 'audit' of the salt bins, but I bet they won't count the broken limbs, or worse, that will result from them slashing the number of them. This week's icy weather shows how dangerous it can be. Lancashire's Labour rulers will have blood on their hands with this.

"This is the crazy sort of cuts we can expect from a centralised outfit that hasn't a clue about winters in Pendle's Pennine towns."

A source within the council department responsible for gritting said that although the authority's figures showed that just over a hundred bins had been removed, the true figure was at least 140 - meaning that 40 per cent of the deposits had been cut.

He added that the department had been inundated with phone calls from people asking why the bins had been removed.

However, Lancashire County Councillor Tony Martin, cabinet member for sustainable development, put the protests down to party politics.

He said: "This is a typical knee-jerk reaction by the Liberal Democrats. They attended the budget meeting and made no protestations. This is simply another bandwagon that they are jumping on.

"We carried out a review and have taken out under-used grit bins, some of which hadn't been used for some time and the grit had solidified. Pendle is not getting a reduced service. It is a case of reviewing salt bin provision through the county to make the service more cost-effective.

"Lancashire County Council has not made any significant reduction to the gritting routes across the county, but it has reviewed and amended the priority and secondary road networks in order to ensure a more effective and responsive service."

He added: "Officers have visited Pendle on many occasions, to meet with local teams and to view the roads for themselves, taking advantage of advice from local traffic engineers and other professional staff before coming up with these proposals - carried out by an independent assessor."

The Liberal Democrats say they will demand that the county council reinstates the salt bins at a meeting of Pendle Council's executive this week.