Did councils used to grit and clear pavements?

[Edewibs]

We live in London and its been icy all week. Pavements around us have slowly changed from snow to ice and are now really dangerous especially as we live on a major road and on a hill. Dod councils used to clear pavements or am I imagining it? I can't imagine using them if I was in any way frail or elderly

That's common sense. But unfortunately, public sector never looks at the bigger picture and only care about their own budgets. Your local council don't have to pay for the NHS treatment of people who fall and break bones, so they're not remotely concerned about it! Perhaps the NHS should pay a contribution to local councils to enable them to grit more roads/pavements as ultimately, it's the NHS budget that pays for the treatment!
Absolutely, they just past the cost onto other public sector services.

I know you can't recruit on the chance of snow, but the bins haven't been collected this week in my area, those workers could have been re purposed to grit the pavements instead, but like you say too much like common sense.

Not uk, but everyone buys their own grit and salt supply ready for winter.

I know some people have no space if in tiny flat, but if you do, grit is super super cheap ( about €2 here for a huge sack v €10 salt sack).

If you have a shed or something, buy your own grit and at least you can grit own path, driveway and in front of house. If everyone did a bit, it would really make a huge difference.
Grit goes down before snow, salt after you have brushed or shovelled bulk of snow away. So you can grit every winter even if it doesn’t snow

@LakieLady
Ours did, or supplied grit boxes for streets that the gritters couldn't reach. They still grit high use pavements in the town centre. The Tories also pledged to ensure sufficient supplies of grit in their election campaign of 2010. They didn't keep that pledge once.

North London here and the council have been gritting every day

We were in a major city in Romania, when it snowed. We have never seen so many different sizes of snow ploughs - some were really small. They had people clearing the pavements of snow in the city straightaway, and when it snowed again; they just started again!

Haven’t seen any gritters and the pavements are treacherous but we do have people cleaning the pavements Mon-Fri year round (not just leaves).

I agree with some PP that I don’t remember it being like this very often - with no thawing at all. Our massive snowman from Monday morning is still up as he was..

Our council (Scotland) has been extensively gritting the roads and pavements. But where we used to live in London I know they haven’t because I’m still on the local community Facebook groups there and there have been a lot of complaints as so many people falling over.