Grit bins and gritting

Last year we asked for your help identifying grit bins that needed re-filling, thank you to everyone that reported them. It will have paid off given the weather we're starting 2026 with.

For the gritting of routes, certain roads take priority. You can see gritting routes, and grit bin locations, here.

We've explained how gritting works across the city below. Apart from that, we want to share a big thank you to all the public spirited local residents who help spread grit on their roads and help their neighbours in other ways. If iciness is causing a major problem for you or neighbours, please let us know.

Gritting across the city

Our grit stock levels are currently high, and grit bins refilled, so we are well prepared in terms of the amount of grit we have.

Our limiting factors will be how quickly our vehicles can grit roads and how quickly things refreeze/snow again.

For gritting, we have 17 resilient routes, these are our absolute priority routes focused on ensuring blue-light services have clear roads.

These routes take precedence over all others.

If we have a further prolonged periods of ice and snow, other routes may not be treated to keep these 17 resilient routes clear.

An additional 13 routes are added to make a total of 30 primary routes, covering all main roads across the city. We also have 28 secondary routes that will also be gritted regularly.

We have 41 grit vehicles operating from three depots (Seacroft, Pottery Fields, and Henshaw), working in order of route priority.

Gritting roads which very few vehicles use is very ineffective, as vehicular movement is what helps the gritting process.

Vehicles can crush the salt crystals, spread brine across the road which lowers the freezing point of water, breaks up ice and generates heat and friction. This is why on busy roads the ice will melt faster, and why if we grit quiet roads they will simply refreeze.

In these snow/icy periods, officers are under a huge amount of pressure and will need to triage work to ensure that the city keeps moving.

Given this pressure and prioritisation, we've been told that requests for additional roads to be added to resilient or primary routes will likely not be able to be accommodated at this point in the year - unless linked to blue light services.

You can see gritting routes, and grit bin locations, here.