Police warn drivers to take care

SHETLAND police will be out in force over the next few weeks to check vehicles are in good shape for the winter weather.

The move is part of the high visibility festive safety campaign being run throughout the country particularly targeted at drink and drug driving.

It comes as the Met Office issued a yellow alert for snow spreading as far north as Shetland.

They say sleet and snow showers, some heavy, will reach northern and eastern Scotland late on Tuesday.

Icy stretches on the roads are also likely, especially on untreated surfaces.

Temperatures on Shetland’s roads were already plunging below zero by lunchtime on Tuesday.

Shetland Islands Council is for the first time gritting some small side roads where ice has compacted since Friday.

Councillors and officials have been inundated with complaints about the council’s new policy not to grit “priority 3” roads, the smallest of side roads in the isles.

Infrastructure director Phil Crossland said the policy adopted on 31 October to save money by reducing gritting was still in place.

Small roads are only being treated after three days of poor weather and only those small roads affected by solid ice would be gritted on Tuesday, Crossland said.

“We will concentrate on areas where we know it’s bad, where you get hard standing ice, particularly up north and out on the west side.

“There are areas that are in shadow that are not warming up during the day that we are going to get some grit on to try and break up the hard impacted ice, though the trouble is that requires vehicular traffic moving it about.”

One car has been reported as being off the road at the Sandwater junction of the A970.

Please send any photos or news about road conditions to news@shetnews.co.uk