Surrey County Council pulled out all the stops last weekend to make sure students could get to the secondary schools in Surrey to take their exams, many of which started on Monday (11 January).

Cabinet Member for Transport Ian Lake said: “We had about 35 highways gangs out all weekend around the county, supported by 35 highways staff who volunteered to give up their time. Doing the majority of the work manually, they shovelled snow and scattered sand and grit on to the ice to make the roads and pavements safer. They did an amazing job, and as a result on Monday morning over 100 secondary schools were accessible both by road or on foot from the nearest A road, enabling thousands of students to take their exams.”

In areas where the snow has been particularly heavy, such as Waverley, farmers were enlisted to help, who also cleared snow within school grounds.

On Sunday night the council added extra roads to its gritting runs to give the maximum coverage to the maximum number of schools in readiness for the morning.

George Abbot School in Guildford was so grateful it immediately placed a message of thanks on its website. The school’s Julian Seymour said: “We would like to express our appreciation to Surrey County Council Highways who have gritted Woodruff Avenue, two pedestrian access routes to Elmslie and Raynham buildings and the main car parks and service road. This has enabled the school to re-open to its 1900 students this morning and given a significant number of them the chance to sit a total of 290 exam papers today.”
Other efforts to battle the ice and snow continued at the same time, with all A roads being salted between two and four times every 24 hours, and several gangs around the county filling grit bins with sand.

The county council would remind students and adults alike that they should still take great care when walking or driving, even on treated surfaces.