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Winter Service

We undertake Winter Service Operations from 1 November to 31 March each Winter, but we may extend this into April if necessary. Our Winter Service resource consists of 21 gritters and 4 tow behind units and last winter we used 4,600 tonnes of salt on treating our roads, footways and filling salt bins.

We prioritise our gritting response based on the usage and volume of traffic of each road as well as the layout of the road itself. These priorities are categorised into 1’s, 2’s and 3’s. Our morning target for having these routes complete are 08:00 for Priority 1’s and 10:00 for Priority 2’s. Our evening targets are 16:00 for Priority 1’s and 18:00 for Priority 2’s. Priority 3’s are not routinely treated unless snow conditions are preventing access. For more information on these priorities please refer to the Winter Service Policy and Winter Service Plan attached to this page.

The Winter Service Plan is available from the 'Related Downloads' section on this page. Other PDFs listed show the routes which are treated as part of the plan.

Read our gritter FAQs here

To find the priority of each road and the location of your nearest salt bin please refer to the map below.

Enter a road name or place to find a specific area.  If you prefer you can also open this map full screen.

A few stats on our winter service:

School Place, Kirkwall, Orkney, KW15 1NY

Telephone: 01856 873535

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Orkney Islands Council: BOREAS DOMUS MARE AMICUS