Bradford Council has forked out nearly £1.5 million to keep the district’s roads useable over the recent severe bad weather, it has been revealed.

Almost £1 million has been spent on supplies of 18,000 tonnes of rock salt which was spread on icy and snowy roads to keep them passable.

This was twice the expected budget and the money has had to come out of the Council’s contingency funds. In addition, an extra £200,000 was spent on employing gritting staff overnight and at weekends in what was sometimes a 24-hour operation needed to keep traffic running.

On top of this the Council has agreed to spend an extra £300,000 to quickly repair the number of potholes that have sprung up across the district as a result of the icy weather.

Extra staff have been drafted in to tackle the workload and began work last week.

At one point, despite the Council beginning the winter period with larger base stocks of grit than last year, supplies did run low and the Council switched to only gritting priority routes. Initially 750 miles of main roads were regularly gritted, but as the severe weather lingered on, that was cut to 250 miles of road. And more than two weeks into the prolonged cold weather, gritting was reduced from 27 key routes to 16.

The Council was one of several authorities to benefit from an extra delivery of salt, supplied by chemical firm Ineos. The 12,000 tonnes had been bound for Germany, but the company agreed to divert it to help the councils most severely affected.

Ian Bairstow, the Council’s strategic director for environment and neighbourhoods, said: “Our total spend on salt is almost £1 million, twice the expected budget, plus an extra £200,000 on labour at nights and weekends to keep roads treated. The total weight of salt spread was in excess of 18,000 tonnes.”