District council backs county road bosses (From Bucks Free Press)

Having been one of those caught up in the winter mayhem last night, and looking at "Battlefield Wycombe" this morning, Wycombe council need to ask themselves one important question; WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED LAST NIGHT?!! Having been gridlocked in Reading, we finally headed towards Wycombe around eleven o'clock last night. The main roads along the A4 through to the Marlow bypass, and even up to Handy Cross were bad, but drivable with care and common sense, and had been kept as clear and gritted as possible. However, on reaching Handy Cross it was a whole different story. By now the early hours of the morning, the roads to Marlow Hill, Cressex and New Road were all gridlocked. The state of these roads were the worst I have ever seen in all my years of driving. If they had been gritted it must have been very early on in the evening, and was certainly not repeated regularly throughout the night. New Road hill was sheer ice, and with cars and lorries abandoned in some very stupid places it was a very worrying place to be. We eventually managed to get through, having taken over three hours to get from Handy Cross to the A40. I will be extremely surprised if no-one was killed last night due to the state of these roads on the main routes through Wycombe. Questions have to be asked as to how all the main hills were allowed to get in to this state in the first place. I have read all the comments this morning saying the temperature plummeted to minus ten (although our car temperature never showed less than minus two, and we were out until 4.00a.m.) and that the weight on snow was just overwhelming, but we only saw two gritters all evening, and they were both heading down the Marlow bypass about 500 metres apart. I know this has been exceptional weather, but we do get snow every year and Wycombe always grinds to a halt. There appears to be very little effective planning to deal with these situations. Indeed, if Wycombe does have emergency and disaster procedures they would seem to be just that; a disaster!

Having looked at the situation this morning and the lack of any evident cleaning up processes after last night's chaos, should not all the able-bodied people who have community service orders and those on unemployment benefit be organised into gangs to go out and help clear the paths? Maybe this would help the old and infirm who are currently unable to leave there houses due to the dire condition of the paths. With this in mind, please check that old and vulnerable people near you are O.K.

instead of using polltax to bump up council pensions spend it on gritting the road

WYCOMBE District Council leader Lesley Clarke has backed county road bosses over gritting – and said lack of cash is not to blame.

they will back each other, no matter what. they are both taken from the same pot.

how the hell can you walk down our street.. and how can you show your face after what u have done to this town, shame on you all

The Councils dont tell us the real truth behind not gritting enough roads in High Wycombe. They couldnt be bothered thats the real TRUTH.
If they were docked money out of their wages which we pay for a decent service and are not getting then they might get off their a r s e s and do something about the things we need. Grit and Salt on our roads please.

Tory Councillor backs another Tory Councillor, WOW, hold the front page!!!!

Lesley Clark as always you are full of SH!T around the clock gritting? More like around the clock SH1T chatting by you and the others at the councils. I have not seen a single gritter, and another thing why were the salt boxes not filled up? How can the councils say they are not for private use? Where I live one salt boxes serves 300 homes, now you tell me Lesley if we were to use that publicly how much of the snow would be clear? Given that no gritting had been done beforehand and there was not a full box of salt? OUT WITH THE TORIES