Heavy snow and poor weather conditions has seen one council spend £100,000 on gritting.

The colder than usual winter saw Conwy council’s highways department spend more than its budget had allowed for in dealing with problems caused by the weather this winter.

Devastating winter storms brought huge disruption to the North Wales travel network. Blizzard conditions struck the region several times during the winter with heavy snow falls in December, February and March.

The latest storm, dubbed the ‘Beast From The East’, saw heavy snow fall and storm conditions in February and March, with councils having to work hard to keep as many routes open as possible.

In Conwy this saw council workers and contractors out gritting and clearing snow, where they used 1,141 tonnes of salt on 12,714km of roads in just two weeks.

A report before the council’s finance scrutiny committee next Monday said money from a fund to deal with poor  weather was not enough to cover the cost of work on the county’s roads.

It said:  “The recent severe weather and the additional associated costs for Environment Roads and Facilities have caused a new pressure late in the financial year.

“This financial pressure can be partly mitigated by the use of the centrally held Adverse Weather/Winter Maintenance reserves in the sum of £136k, but the emerging picture suggests there will be a net financial requirement above this figure to fund the winter pressures of approximately £100k.”

A spokeswoman for Conwy council said: “The need for winter maintenance work between October 2017 and April 2018 was higher than recent years. Cold, wet weather meant having to grit more than in the recent past.

“There was also a number of severe weather events during February and March, which meant a significantly increased rate of winter maintenance activity: between February 25 and March 4, the gritting fleet was operational for a total of 1,896 hours, applied 1,141 tonnes of salt to 12,714km of roads and carried out snow ploughing.

Agricultural contractors were also mobilised to help reach isolated communities and individual properties.”