THE true grit of a dedicated team of roadworkers is poised, ready to keep a county's highways flowing during the coming winter months.

Almost £2.5m has been earmarked by Durham County Council to beat the freeze in the annual battle to ensure roads are kept clear in the face of hostile winter weather.

Almost 36,000 tonnes of salt has been stockpiled by the county council to tackle the big freeze, at a cost of £24 per tonne.

The authority aims to salt almost half of the 3,500km, about 2,000 miles, of the county's highways during bad weather.

It claims this is a higher percentage than other similarly-sized councils.

But to back up the winter roads maintenance operation the council is, for the first time, issuing an information leaflet.

Produced and distributed to various libraries and other public contact points, it includes details of winter salting routes across the county.

Chris Tunstall, the council's director of environment and technical services, said: "Last year was a particularly bad winter for many areas of the county, but we were well prepared.

"It is the council's policy to provide an efficient winter maintenance service, which will permit the safe movement of traffic throughout the county and keep delays to a minimum on the treated network."

The Met Office provides the council with four weather forecasts each day, including road surface temperature information. These forecasts form part of an ice prediction system which uses 11 remote weather stations throughout the county, providing atmospheric and road surface temperature information.

All the data is then analysed before the decision is taken whether or not to salt the roads.

"Once the decision to salt has been taken our fleet of gritters is deployed to spread salt on the road network, either in total or in part," said Mr Tunstall.

"The new technologies available to us mean we can target our resources where they are most needed."

"In addition, there are 1,500 salt bins at various locations across the county for motorists to help themselves," he said.

The council's fleet of vehicles ready to tackle the winter weather includes 44 power gritters, 31 trailer gritters and five snowblowers.