FEATURE
A RECORD-BREAKING WINTER
Vicky Lopez, Director of winter risk management specialists, De-ice, says this was the harshest winter in the company's two decades of operation.
There is no doubt that Winter 2017/18 has been our toughest one yet. We can all remember the 2010 Big Freeze, but that was one prolonged cold period. This last winter saw three snow events in one season; and the weather was nothing short of relentless. Parts of the country found it impossible to recover from one event to another, and the images highlighted across the media brought this home hard.
The statistics were alarming. Claims in the media stated that the early March snow cost the UK economy £1bn per day. Some councils across the country were reported to have already spent their winter maintenance budgets by the 1st February 2018, whilst others had overspent by more than £400,000 across the months of February and March.
In our 20+ years of operation, this was a record breaking winter for De-ice. We attended over 26,000 gritting visits and our snow ploughs were in operation for more than 1500 hours. There were periods where the conditions and events were simply out of our control. Local roads were -
“We need greater resilience planning, and winter gritting
operators should be poised to act when the time is right.”
sadly - impassable, making it impossible for us to provide service; a situation we are rarely in.
What we have all come to learn from these tough winters is the fact that the country only has a finite number of resources when it comes to battling the elements. We need greater resilience planning, and winter gritting operators should be poised to act when the time is right, and when they know they will succeed. Greater levels of local council investment will undoubtedly make our work easier, but at the end of the day it is vital for us to all work together to keep Britain safe and moving during critical weather events.
What we were perhaps most amazed - and concerned - by was the fact that we signed up 80+ new clients in the midst of the 2017-18 snow chaos. These were companies finding themselves caught out by the bad weather, and which hadn't previously organised a winter service contractor. They came to realise how essential that service was in their hour of need. The extreme conditions caused mayhem, and many businesses were simply unprepared. Admittedly, we were happy to step in and support, but commencing our winter gritting services in this way is far from ideal. We need time and effective preparations in order to carry out the work to the best of our abilities.
Whilst statistics and data can be incredibly useful for tracking trends, we have to remember that no two winters are ever the same. We have to plan for the future and put effective planning in place; a reactive or knee-jerk response can put peoples' health and safety at real risk - from staff to visitors. It has become essential to do as much as possible to tackle the elements and to be ready for any eventuality, which includes a series of snow events - one after the other.
Whilst figures have been bandied about around the overall expense to the economy from the storms of Winter 2017/2018, what is also crucial is the need to address the individual costs to businesses, not just in terms of financials, but also the stress and time they have to dedicate to recovering from the impact of the wind, snow and ice. Developing a winter management plan has become crucial, and if any winter has demonstrated this it was the one we have all just witnessed, and whose images will remain vivid for years to come. None of us will forget the 2017-18 'Beast from the East' and the havoc it caused, but we must all learn and move on from the events of the winter gone by. The next one is just around the corner.
www.de-ice.co.uk 34 | TOMORROW’S FM
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