Urban Salt Bag Scheme 2025/26

Overview

Invitation to participate in the 2025/26 Winter Salt Bag Partnership Scheme

Closing date 21 July 2025

We are inviting Councillors of unparished areas across Essex to participate in the this years Winter Salt Bag Partnership Scheme.

Therefore we would be grateful if you could please complete this online form by closing date to say if you would or wouldn’t like to take part this year and we will log all the details.

Please make sure you have all the Delivery contact address/telephone numbers to hand prior to completing this form. Please note the delivery company can only deliver within the Essex adminstrative area.

To support local communities to help themselves during periods of heavy snow and build on their community resilience, Essex County Council (ECC) would like to make available to each participating Councillor a one tonne wrapped pallet made up of individual 25kg bags for use by the community on the local highway. ECC is offering this free of charge this year.

A free Support Pack is available online to help you organise your scheme.

If it is your preference to produce your own you may, you just need to run whatever version is decided upon through your insurers for Public and Employee Liability purposes.

The pack contains:

A Volunteer Briefing page – Snow Clearing Guidance for your volunteers on how to clear snow and some things they should consider for their own safety and security.

A Winter Plan – To set out details of your scheme, put on noticeboards or parish website (if you have one) and A Risk Assessment form - for the volunteer to complete with the participating Town or Parish Council and for you to keep. 

Manual Handling Information – Good Handling Technique for Lifting

Please download the documents from www.essexhighways.org/salt-bag-partnership. 

If you would like to know how to set up the scheme for your area, the following points should be considered:

• Identify the priority areas for your local community (these must be on the public highway and not for any other area such as private driveways) such as footpaths outside local shops, doctors, access routes to main bus stops etc. which are not already salted by ECC (the salting network is mapped on our Website at www.essexhighways.org/salting-routes
• Confirm that the volunteers are confident they are physically able to manually remove snow and then spread a thin layer of salt when required and provide them with Snow Clearance Guidance, risk assessment form and Manual Handling information.
• Keep a record of these priority areas on your Winter Plan and the details of the volunteers who are nominated to clear snow/salt for each chosen location
• Give each volunteer a bag/supply of salt to store in preparation for when it snows

Responses MUST be received by the closing date to ensure that we can procure the correct quantity of bagged salt needed and arrange delivery. Therefore, please note that responses received after this date cannot be accepted onto this years scheme.

For those who apply by the deadline, who want salt, will have their delivery of one tonne of bagged palleted salt programmed to arrive from September to early October to allow you time to allocate to Volunteers before the winter. Please note we are unable to make ad-hoc or additional re-stock deliveries throughout Winter.

If you would like to print this section for reference, Please use the PRINT button on your internet browser.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that took part last year and we are using your feedback to continue to improve the scheme

To keep up to date with our winter service please visit www.essexhighways.org/winter-travel.

Under the Data Protection Act we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. This information will only be used for the purposes described in the application form and will not be kept longer than is necessary to do so, up to a maximum of two years.

The information submitted will be shared for specific delivery purposes and in accordance with strict arrangements with Essex County Council and the Logistics Company.

What happens next

The information submitted will be shared for specific delivery purposes and in accordance with strict arrangements with Essex County Council and the Logistics Company.