In 2010, heavy snowfall took Bournemouth by surprise causing some local services to grind to a halt in the coldest British winter for 100 years. A year later and Bournemouth Council is preparing for any possible repeat.

Councillor Peter Charon, Leader of the Council, said: “Despite the relatively mild winter season thus far we all know that the weather can change quickly and as a result we are well prepared ahead of any potential repeat of last year’s cold snap.

The council say a team of gritters are ready to go, and will be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the traffic moving. 1800 tonnes of road salt is in stock and £150,000 of Road Rescue programme money has been set aside as contingency to repair potholes.

The Council will be putting out Gritter alerts on its “Gritter Twitter” page to let the public know of planned gritting operations.

Community Care Service Users are advised that the Home Care and Reablement Services, who provide and support people living in their own homes, will ensure that service users continue to be visited during any adverse winter weather.

Service users and their family members will be contacted before any potential disruption to home visits due to increased travelling times as a result of hazardous winter weather. All vehicles are well maintained to minimise disruption to services in bad weather. Additional services will be provided to people unable to attend Day Centres such as meal delivery to service users homes.

Meanwhile, all local primary and secondary schools are to inform parents of any school closures through early morning local radio broadcasts on Heart FM and Wave 105 FM.