Road winter maintenance

We can be contacted on 0300 100 1800 regarding the Winter service. It would be appreciated if your calls were restricted to essential or emergency enquiries on Council roads only. For legal reasons, the Council is unable to offer advice on Trunk Roads. 

We run a priority system for road and footway treatment within the Scottish Borders. We concentrate our road winter maintenance (gritting/salting and snow clearance) on:

• key main roads
• major bus routes
• roads to hospitals, ambulance depots and fire stations.

We will then treat other main and residential access roads before treating the remaining road network.

During snowy conditions all available resources are deployed on all categories of road routes in priority order for as long as snowy conditions last.

During freezing conditions primary road route treatment may be limited outside normal working hours (7.30am to 4.00pm Monday to Friday).

Primary road routes

Primary road routes are the sections of road network we treat first when it is forecast that road surface temperatures will fall below freezing.

These routes will be treated between 6am and 8.30am and at a time in the evening before the forecasted time that road surface temperatures will fall below freezing.

Secondary road routes

Secondary road routes are all other maintained roads with the council's road network. Secondary road routes are treated when no further treatment of primary road routes is required.  

The map shows the network of priority routes that will be treated before ice forms or treated before morning traffic. These main roads, generally "A" and "B" roads, carry significant traffic or are, in some cases, school bus routes. 

BEAR Scotland maintain and manage Trunk Roads, including all aspects of the winter service. Consequently, any query regarding Trunk Road Winter Service on the A1, A68, A7 (south of Galashiels), A6091 and A702 should be directed to BEAR on 0800 138 9903 or via the BEAR Scotland website.