To ask the Minister for Infrastructure to detail the number of road gritters that are available across the network, broken down by local council area.

My Department currently has 129 gritters available for the delivery of winter service across the North. Gritters are allocated to the 109 gritting routes with spare vehicles available when required. It should be noted that many of the routes cross council boundaries and therefore it is not possible to detail the number of gritters used in each council. However, the table below provides the number of gritters based in my Department’s depots within each council area. Motorways, some trunk roads including the A1, A4 and A12 are served by 8 gritters through the Department’s two Public Private Partnership contracts.