They may instead choose to reduce or close public services such as street cleaning, park and road maintenance, libraries and leisure centres.

Many councils have abandoned regular road maintenance but resurface stretches when potholes and gullies start appearing, pushing up costs further.

It argues that there are huge variations in the price of road maintenance materials and services.

I then cross-examined on the minutiae of refuse collection, road maintenance and compulsory competitive tendering.

Councils, whose road maintenance budgets have fallen sharply after government spending cuts, have increased their orders of salt to 1.4 million tonnes.