A PARISH councillor has hit out at his local highway authority for not gritting a busy road near a school.

Councillor Tony Mayhew, from Dene Valley Parish Council, claims that the road between Auckland Park, near Bishop Auckland, and Dene Valley Primary School, is treacherous in the cold weather.

He said that he and other parents have had lucky escapes after hitting black ice and almost colliding with cars travelling in the opposite direction.

He said: "I cannot believe that the road is not down on Durham County Council's list for gritting.

"Parents take their kids to school using that road and it is like a sheet of glass. The paths are the same. Nobody can walk on them. It is dangerous.

"If people were stubborn, children would lose schooling because they would refuse to travel on that road to take them to school."

Coun Mayhew spoke out after two cars collided near the Coundon Grange junction last Thursday.

Fire crews and police attended the scene but nobody was seriously injured.

Coun Mayhew said: "The road was closed for a couple of hours. This is an access to the villages around here and people need that road to be safe. Do we have to wait before somebody is killed?''

A spokeswoman for Durham County Council, which is responsible for the gritting service, said that the authority spends about £2.1m pre-salting its roads.

She said: "We pre-salt 42 per cent of the county's 3,600 kilometres of roads.

"This road isn't part of our pre-salt network and therefore it isn't treated. The roads are reviewed every year and we have increased the number of roads we do this year. We simply do not have the resources to treat every road in the county.''