Powys Roads Winter Service Review

Powys County Council is reviewing the way Powys roads are serviced, or treated, during the winter months. This will be done by applying a category to each road using a set of criteria.

We would like you to have your say on how the road categorisation process is applied. Through this online engagement exercise, you will find a list of criteria which help categorise each road. We would like you to rank these criteria in order of priority when it comes to winter servicing.

For example, high-ranking criteria would result in that road receiving the highest level of winter servicing, and low-ranking criteria would result in that road receiving a lower level of winter servicing.

The road network within Powys stretches more than 5,500 km and is made up of county roads (maintained and managed by Powys County council) and trunk roads (maintained and managed by North and Mid Wales Trunk Road Agency (NMWTRA) on behalf of Welsh Government).

Historically, how these roads have been serviced and maintained during the winter months has evolved at a local level. Although the rationale behind the current winter service programme had been well intentioned, the time is right for this to be reviewed against national code of practices and the current, modern-day needs of our county.

Working with the guidance from the National Winter Service Research Group (NWSRG) and the Well-managed Highway Infrastructure: A Code of Practice, it is proposed to categorise all Powys roads using a risk and evidence-based approach. In layman’s terms this means we have considered a number of factors for each road, including traffic volume, public transport links, amenities and essential services such as schools, medical centres and the location of emergency services.

Once the proposed category for each road is confirmed, we can apply these in practical terms, developing a proposed set of winter service routes for the whole county which will have been created using an open, consistent and fair approach that will provide an equitable service for all of Powys.

Through this exercise your feedback will ensure that wherever possible we are meeting the expectations of the communities, prioritising roads correctly and applying the final categorisations fairly across the whole county.

This engagement exercise will end on Sunday 14 May 2023.