Plans to cut down on gritting in Ceredigion this winter and change the temperature at which precautionary gritting is undertaken in a bid to save £25,000 has been voted through by Cabinet members.

A Ceredigion County Council report during budget discussions in February outlined plans to “review and reduce winter gritting routes” from this year, in a bid to shave £25,000 off the service’s cost.

The figure will see approximately a 10 per cent saving, meaning that dozens of roads that are less likely to be gritted when bad weather hits.

Cabinet members, meeting on Tuesday, 3 September, agreed to a new “assessment matrix” for whether roads are gritted this winter which will include a “reduced threshold for undertaking pre-treatment of the precautionary routes from +1C to +0.5C.”

The county would be broken down into four zones instead of three under the new plans, a report outlined, “with the introduction of a coastal domain resulting in fewer actions/runs occurring along the routes within this domain due to the warming effect of the sea.”

The “savings would be in a reduction of driving time, salt usage and diesel to include less wear and tear on plant,” the report said.