THE amount of salt spread on Flintshires roads this week has been cut by 25 per cent.

An intervention by the government has limited salt supplies to every local authority and in response Flintshire Council has had to reduce the amount of salt it spreads across the county.

Speaking at a meeting at County Hall yesterday highways chief Dave Faulkner said: “Following the intervention from national government to save salt we have had to cut down our spread of salt.

"We are now spreading less salt and that has saved us 25 per cent of what we were doing a few weeks ago.”

Wales is currently allocated 15 per cent of the UK’s supply and Flintshire is to receive 700 tonnes, which is expected to last for the next few days.

Mr Faulkner said that at the moment the workers would only be salting priority routes.

He added:” I have always got to be mindful of the next few days and I don’t want to be spreading salt like it’s going out of fashion. In a normal situation, if we had plenty of salt, once we had done the priority roads we would go out to the remaining road network and that is what we have not been able to do.

“This has never been a budget issue, it’s just an issue over the certainty of the supply of salt.”

Cllr Tony Sharps, executive member for environment, hit out at the government for interfering.

He told the meeting: “We were instructed that we were not allowed anywhere near our salt stores to collect our salt and as a consequence we ran out of grit.

"I take this as interference by the government. Not only are they telling us how to run our education and our health service, but they are now telling us how and when we should spread grit.”

Despite the pressures on the council members praised the workforce for working round the clock to clear the snow and ice off the roads.

Cllr Matt Wright said: “I would like to say thank you to the staff who are working night and day to clear the roads. We need to make it clear how hard they are working.”