THE idea that the NHS should help pay to grit the roads is a novel one which may be about to gain a grip across the country.

But is it right that health service cash should be spent on what is traditionally the remit of councils?

Kath Toward’s answer to that question is an emphatic “no”. She is so passionate in her view that she resigned as a hard-working and respected hospital governor after NHS County Durham gave £1m to Durham County Council towards gritting the roads.

Her view is that the money should have been spent on patient services.

The counter argument from NHS County Durham is that it is a preventative step which will save the health service money in the long run by reducing the number of injuries.

It is the NHS equivalent of backing a horse and believing it will win.

Transport Minister Sadiq Khan has now indicated that more NHS money could be gambled elsewhere by saying other parts of the country could learn from Durham’s example.

We fully accept the principle that a proportion of NHS resources must be invested in preventative measures. A wholly reactive NHS would be shamefully inefficient.

The difficulty is in assessing the success of those preventative measures, and forming a judgement on the County Durham grit experiment will surely prove inconclusive.

The £1m was handed over weeks before we encountered the worst snow and ice for 30 years.

In that exceptional context, how on earth are we going to know how much casualty time was saved by an extra £1m of grit?

Our bet is that we will never know if the horse came in.