ONLY one week of severe winter weather in York cost the city council a whopping £180,000, it has emerged.

City of York Council normally spends about £15,000 a week tackling its winter roads - but costs during last week's snow onslaught soared to 12 times that amount with £33,000 spent on salting footways alone.

The huge cost accounted for most of February's total winter maintenance bill of £221,000.

During the week, a team of ten gritters made 33 trips on 12,000 kilometres of roads, with 2,000 tonnes of salt spread.

Tackling winter roads costs the council thousands of pounds each year in maintaining and fuelling its gritters, paying weather forecasters, buying salt and paying standby gritting staff on nights when bad weather is forecast.

Costs so far this year have spiralled to half a million pounds - a huge £169,000 over the original winter road allocation of £361,000.

The council has had to dip deep into its reserve funds for the extra cash, and it was already £100,000 over budget before last week's severe weather snap.

Coun Tracey Simpson-Laing, Labour opposition spokesman for planning and transport, has called for an inquiry on the council's gritting policy, saying the winter road budget had been overspent for years.

Next year, the council is putting aside an additional £100,000 for winter maintenance. Coun Ann Reid, pictured, executive member for planning and transport, said savings would be made elsewhere to find the extra cash, with measures including putting up short-term car-parking charges.

Yesterday, Coun Reid approved new highways costs - including maintaining winter roads - at a meeting with her advisory panel.

Coun Derek Smallwood, advisory panel chair, today paid tribute to the hard work of the council's ten-strong gritting team.

"They worked exceptionally hard to keep the roads and footpaths clear," he said.

David Finnegan, the council's director of commercial services - who is responsible for the gritting team, said the gritting team had done a "brilliant job".

He said: "The people working on the council's gritting operation are incredibly dedicated and hard working.

"They have to work throughout the night in freezing conditions to make the road network passable and they've done a brilliant job over the last week."

Meanwhile, in Hambleton, bad weather has again disrupted refuse collections .

The district council's vehicles were out on the roads but some areas were expected to be inaccessible due to the snow.

Eric Kendall, head of environmental health, said: "Properties due for collections can expect delays to the service. We will try to get to as many people as possible, but some roads and lanes are inaccessible.

"We urge householders to continue to be patient with us during this bout of bad weather. We hope to catch up, but the service is in the hands of the weather."

Updated: 10:05 Friday, March 04, 2005