The salt shortage is hitting councils’ highways maintenance budgets, as authorities face increased costs for rock salt, and are forced to resort to more expensive alternatives.
APSE, the Association for Public Service Excellence, has received reports of salt suppliers charging higher prices per tonne of rock salt than £25 – as much as double, according to Mo Baines, APSE principal advisor.
She appreciated that the suppliers were putting extra investment in, and that market forces would inevitably cause prices to rise for a scarce resource. However, Baines told Surveyor: ‘I’d be concerned if the situation is being exploited, and extortionate levels are being charged. That is money for service delivery.’ APSE could not divulge more details and had not carried out a comprehensive survey.
Many local highway authorities have fixed-price contracts with the largest supplier, Salt Union, and so were not experiencing price rises. A spokeswoman for Salt Union said: ‘We have not made any adjustments in our prices.’ Cleveland Potash, the second-biggest supplier, which arranged the import of the extra 40,000t, from Spain, of which 2,000t had docked at Shoreham-by-Sea on Monday and 4,500t was arriving in Aberdeen on Wednesday, was also ‘honouring commitments to customers’.
Several authorities told LocalGov sister title, Surveyor, they were paying extra for alternatives. Gloucestershire purchased 500t of table salt at three times the cost of rock salt. Leicestershire bought a table salt by-product, which ‘came at a cost’, while Somerset obtained 3,000t of sub-standard salt. Councils were even experimenting with using potash, according to APSE, as well as mixing rock salt with grit, or aggregate.
Matthew Lugg, CSS engineering chair, commented: ‘Rather than waiting to see if a delivery will arrive, councils are being innovative.’
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