Blizzard of complaints

Locals awoke on Thursday morning to find their streets buried under inches of heavy snow which had fallen overnight. Unlike much of the snow which fell before Christmas, last week's flurry piled up high onto pavements, making ease of access an impossibility on the town's main thoroughfares and causing long traffic delays.

Drivers and pedestrians alike complained that they had not seen one gritter on the roads.

It was a move which echoed the complaints voiced before Christmas by so many of our readers who claimed that NLC had been caught napping.

Meanwhile another caller claimed that motorised ROADSWEEPERS were being used in lieu of snowploughs in Cumbernauld and Croy.

He said: "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It looked absolutely ridiculous to see this tiny machine trying to tackle all that snow."

Graham MacKay head of roads and transportation at North Lanarkshire Council, said that the criticism was unjustified. And he claimed that main roads were gritted by 2pm and that other routes were treated by nightfall.

"Roads in and around Cumbernauld were gritted on Wednesday night when snow was forecast. On Thursday morning, every available resource was deployed to Cumbernauld and the surrounding areas of high ground, which had been worst affected by the snow. However, a major traffic incident on the A80 combined with another snowfall during rush hour resulted in serious congestion in and around the town, which delayed the fleet.

"Once it arrived, however, the primary roads were cleared very quickly, and the remainder of the afternoon was spent clearing and treating secondary and minor roads,'' he added.

"Throughout this winter, the council has used every means at its disposal to deal with snow and ice. In some cases, that has meant attaching snowploughs and/or grit dispensers to the vehicles used by our grounds maintenance teams, from litter sweepers to lawnmowers.

"It looks odd, but it gets the job done, and it's another example of how we've made every effort to keep North Lanarkshire running," he said.