COUNCIL chiefs should pull £100,000 out of the reserves to plug a budget gap caused by this year's "severe winter".

A City of York Council report recommends that the cash, to come from the authority's general contingency fund, should be given to support the increased cost experienced in the highways maintenance budget.

Councillors attending a meeting of the executive member with the transport advisory panel, on April 7, will learn that "this year has seen a winter more severe than normal".

A report, written by council officers, said a typical winter would normally require on average 55 grit runs. This time the gritters had been out 62 times to "carry out precautionary salting of the winter maintenance network".

It said: "This, along with gritting of footways, sanding of cycleways and removal of snow has seen an overspend in the winter maintenance budget of £100,000. An application to the general contingency fund will need to be made to cover this overspend."

Earlier in the winter, the council's gritting policy came under fire because of ice chaos on the city's roads.

Liberal Democrat leader, Coun Steve Galloway, raised the issue at a council meeting after a series of crashes on the authority's border on the A59 in January.

In one accident, a van crashed through a fence and was left perilously close to a railway line.

But the gritters were defended by Coun Tracey-Simpson Laing who blamed a "sharp drop in conditions" for the chaos.

Now councillors are being asked to agree to the cash withdrawal in order to balance the budget books.

Coun Galloway said he was surprised to hear that this winter had been regarded as "severe". He said: "Anyone with any sort of memory will have seen winters that were more severe than this one.

"The truth of the matter is that the council budgeted for a mild winter rather than an average one and, as we have seen with the gritters, they have had to take more expensive options.

"This policy does merit review, although we do not criticise expenditure on gritting because that's obviously there to maintain safety."

Updated: 10:51 Tuesday, April 01, 2003