Barnet Council latest - Motorists more important than hospitals

I was shocked to read this press release from Barnet Council. It includes the following insight into the thinking of Barnet Council. This designates their strategy for road gritting and keeping access open
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• priority one routes include principal roads and main roads. These routes are treated prior to adverse weather conditions and in times of snow, continuously until the route is safe.
• priority two routes include town centres, transport hubs, hospitals, public buildings and schools

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It seems that in the priority list of Barnet Council, car drivers are a higher priority than hospitals and schools. Surely keeping hospitals safe should be the no 1 priority for the council. Brian Coleman has often stated that motorists come first in Barnet, but I hadn't realised that this was taken quite so literally.

On the subject of the weather generally, I have a helpful tip for the CEO of Barnet Council and  also to new Council Leader Lynne Hillan. If you click On This Site it Tells you can see the weather forecast for Barnet.  Why do I mention this? Well the Barnet Times leading story is about an emergency gritting operation throughout Barnet. If they'd bothered to check the weather forecast, they'd not have needed an "emergency operation". They'd have had a "planned operation to deal with forecast bad weather". It's not rocket science. You keep an eye on the weather forecast and you plan action accordingly.

I've lived in Mill Hill most of my life and I remember the good old days when Barnet Council used to grit sideroads and pavements. Now correct me if I'm wrong but we pay more council tax than ever. What for? It certainly isn't to have the sideroads and pavements cleared. My guess is that when I was a boy, the council didn't have office upon office full of senior managers, managers and undermanagers. I doubt that when it snowed there were teams of senior management on over £100,000 per year holding emergency strategy meetings to decide gritting strategies.

The system then was far simpler. When it was icy or snowed, they'd allocate the gritters an area and they'd go and grit them. The foreman would make sure that the crews got out and an ample supply of salt and grit was held at council depots as it doesn't go off. I've heard  talk that the Council are "quite pleased with how they handled the conditions" and that "The lessons have been learned". The mere fact that all of the old people in my road and surrounding roads are stuck in, for fear of slipping on icy pavements doesn't matter.

Just one other little sidenote. In Sheltered Housing blocks where the wardens can put a bit of slat down. If Lynne Hillan gets her way and sacks these, what will happen during future icy spells? This is why David Young has persued the case through the courts.

All in all this whole fiasco sums up the attitude of "I'm all right jack Barnet". They'll happily spend a million pounds reopening Partingdale Lane, originally shut for safety reasons, but they wont spend a sum of less than half that to keep sheltered housing wardens for the elderly, the infirm and the disabled. It's there in black and white what their priority is. Scandalous.