In October, local authority leaders in highways met in Bradford – proudly the City of Culture 2025 – bringing industry experts and local authority staff together for APSE’s recent Winter Maintenance forum to hear how they can become more resilient in the face of an increasingly volatile winter climate.

Gone are the days when the lexicon of winter maintenance was limited to salt on the roads and grit bins. Now, councils must work together with their climate change, flood resilience, and emergency response teams to prepare for freezing conditions.

We started with a welcome to the City of Culture from the local Head of Highways, Richard Gelder, with lessons learnt over the previous winter for one of the nation’s largest winter maintenance operations for a metropolitan district.

It was then over to Debbie Johns, head of APSE’s Performance Networks benchmarking service, which captures valuable data from the coalface of most local authorities nationwide, publishing the key findings. This year showed that most teams are aware of their council’s climate emergency declaration and that many have a climate adaptation plan, but by no means was this universal.

As net zero becomes an increasingly divisive term, surely there can be more unity on the view that we must all work to prevent communities from suffering the devastating effects of extreme weather. Yet most authorities that completed our survey reported they were facing decreasing budgets across their service.

Fortunately, procurement of salt was less of an issue, and most councils agreed that we are facing less snow/ice in winter, and more frequent rain and flash flooding instead. Trending areas include route optimisation and even AI to plan gritting routes, with around a third using thermal mapping data. The use of volunteer snow wardens was also mentioned – but others have reported that recruitment of such volunteers is a challenge.

The ‘Friends of Parks’ or litter picking volunteer groups approach hasn’t easily translated to the world of snow clearance – the thought of going out in the cold hasn’t quite appealed to the same extent. The onus therefore remains on council teams, and volunteers are no substitute.

We then heard from John Lamb, an eminent speaker and expert on all things highways and climate change, who delivered a passionate ‘call to action’ to all highways authorities. He chairs the Adaptation, Biodiversity and Climate Change Board at the UK Roads Leadership Group (UKRLG) and represents the UK on the World Disaster Management Committee. He really hit home with the reality of climate change and its devastating effects worldwide, and how highways teams and local authorities need to step up to the plate – it’s happening now, not just in the future.

Important stakeholders and partners such as the Environment Agency (Jacqui Cotton), Yorkshire Water (Robert Green and Jason Allred), and the Canal and Rivers Trust (Catherine Clayton), all presented on the fantastic work they have been doing in partnership with local authorities.

Richard Hayes, former president of the Institute of Highway Engineers (IHE) and part of the National Winter Service Research Group (NWSRG), delivered a pertinent talk on how there have been changes to the accreditation process and training around the ‘bread and butter’ side of winter teams. Commercial partners JCB and NIRA Dynamics then showcased their latest innovations, thereby covering both ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ facets of an effective winter service.

Joining Bradford in the local authority best practice lineup was Gloucestershire and their excellent emergency response to Storm Bert in the Cotswolds. Team Gloucestershire, led by Highways Asset & Business Manager Kev Downer, was shortlisted for this year’s APSE’s Annual Service Awards in the Technical Services category.

Finally, Dr Muriel Bonjean Stanton from the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission shared how they are working together on climate adaptation programmes for local authorities. This was an excellent blueprint which could be applied nationwide, and we hope to see more climate commissions pop up around the country bringing these experts together, not least in the face of political headwinds.

Whilst we head towards shorter days, the future still looks bright. Stay safe out there this winter and we hope to see you in the new year!

APSE’s Annual Highways and Street Lighting Seminar is taking place on Thursday 19 March at St James’ Park, Newcastle.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2025 issue of LAPV. Sign up here to receive your free copy of future issues.