Bristol City Council Won't Say If It's Ready for Winter — And Christmas Stock Is Already on Its Way.
Grit stocks, FOI failures, and a council that doesn't seem able to confirm much at all, really. Except. It exists. At least, by name.
[Two seasons, one stockroom — and only one side of it keeping a straight face about being ready]
Well. What do you know, dear reader. There are 142 calendar days left until Christmas Day — Friday, 25 December 2026. Can you believe it? No. Didn’t think so. Strip out the Sundays and it’s closer to 121 working and shopping days.
Anyway. The bikinis and shorts are still out. The barbecues are still going. People are out there enjoying a heatwave they’d normally have to get on a plane for, and summer, in Bristol, is still very much happening.
Not all of it stays where it’s put. Somewhere, right now, a disposable barbecue is being left where the last sausage came off it — still hot, on dry grass.
It’s a summer dry enough that South Wales Fire and Rescue have been fighting a wildfire near Blaenavon since 20 July, one large enough to affect air quality thirty kilometres away in Cardiff. You know. As if the air there wasn’t bad enough already. Some might say. Just not me.
Meanwhile, in another country across the border, with a river running in between, fire crews in Dorset and Wiltshire are telling people to go to the pub instead. Brewers elsewhere, one assumes, are not exactly disappointed. However. When nature takes its course.
Near Dunwich, a historic pub had to close entirely while firefighters tackled a blaze on the heath next door. Nobody plans for that part of summer either. It simply happens, quietly, the way these things always simply happen. And no one got to go to the pub instead.
And yet, quietly, in the background of all that festivity, something rather strange is already underway. Somewhere between now and the next fortnight, a lorry will pull into the back of a Bristol supermarket carrying several thousand plastic skulls. Behind the skulls, boxes of fireworks for the fifth of November, because apparently nobody’s allowed a clean run between one bang and the next.
Of course. Nobody will announce any of this. There will be no ceremony. It will simply happen, the way these things always simply happen — the retail equivalent of a light switching on in an empty room, watched by nobody, timed by somebody very far away.
The First Sign Isn’t the Skulls.
You’ll know it’s begun properly not from the skulls, but from something smaller. A bag of roast turkey flavoured crisps, quietly present on a shelf that, as far as anyone else is concerned, is still selling sun cream.
Christmas pudding flavour follows soon after, because someone, somewhere, has decided this is a thing the nation wants twice a year rather than once. (One assumes, mercifully, that no brandy is required, and no ceremonial setting alight — though the packet might reasonably carry a warning to that effect. Perhaps a complimentary burns pack, tucked in alongside, purely as a precaution.)
Nobody will have asked for either flavour. Nobody ever does. They’ll simply be there, weeks ahead of their season, like messengers sent on ahead to confirm the main event is coming. (One does wonder, frankly, why Kellogg’s hasn’t got there first with Christmas Pudding Frosties. Give it time. Somebody in a marketing meeting somewhere is almost certainly pitching it as we speak.)
Not the Only Ones Ahead of Schedule.
Sainsbury’s, for what it’s worth, isn’t even waiting for the crisps to make the point. Pigs in blankets — usually reserved, quite reasonably, for the one week of the year anyone can stomach them — are already on the shelf. In August. Alongside the sun cream, presumably, for anyone confused enough to want both in the same trolley.
And they’re not the only ones ahead of schedule. Out there right now, entirely unbothered by any of this, are the sensible ones — picking through car boot sales, charity shops and end-of-season clearance rails for Christmas presents nobody else has thought to buy yet.
No panic, no inflated December prices, no scrum. Just people who worked out, quietly, months ago, that planning ahead saves money. It’s not a difficult trick. It’s the same one the supermarkets are running. Bristol City Council appears to be the only party in this entire story yet to learn it.
Two Seasons, One Storeroom.
So. Spare a thought, in all this, for the person stacking the shelves. Out front, it’s still suncream and disposable barbecues. Out back, they’re unpacking tinsel next to a stockroom fan still running flat out from July.
Two seasons, occupying the same twelve feet of storeroom, at the same time. Somebody has to walk between them fifty times a shift without their head falling off.
That’s not seasonal drift. That’s a plan. Somebody, somewhere, has already worked out the exact week your Christmas spending should start feeling inevitable. (One assumes there’s a spreadsheet. There’s always a spreadsheet.)
Here’s a modest proposal, offered entirely in the spirit of efficiency: why not simply merge the three? One combined festival — skulls, bangers and baubles, all going up on the same day, all coming down on the same day, filed under “Autumn/Winter Miscellaneous Observance” and never spoken of individually again.
Think of the branding alone. A single mascot, part skeleton, part reindeer, holding a sparkler. One card covers the lot — trick or treat, bang goes the rocket, and season’s greetings, all at a discount. Trick-or-treaters simply progress straight to carol singing at the same doorstep, no need to change costume, and the crisps — mercifully — only need to pick one flavour.
The Almighty Gob has questions about who else is supposed to be planning ahead of a season — and isn’t.
Same Question, Different Storeroom.
Retailers get this right, apparently. Supermarket chains work out their Halloween-to-Christmas rollout with the precision of a military operation, warehousing stock for months before a single tinsel strand touches a shelf.
While. In contrast. Of course. Bristol City Council’s highways team has its own seasonal stockroom question, and it’s a considerably less decorative one. Is the grit already going in, the way a well-run operation would manage it — some quiet requisition form winging its way, purely for comic purposes, to a salt mine somewhere in Siberia, months ahead of the first frost? Perhaps.
(The odds of it actually coming from Siberia are roughly those of rocking-horse droppings. A quarry in Cheshire is rather more likely. Siberia is simply more fun.)
Or does the salt order only get remembered the first morning someone’s car won’t grip the tarmac on Gloucester Road, and a council officer somewhere mutters the immortal words, “well, we weren’t expecting that“?
What Other Councils Say, and What Bristol Doesn’t.
This is where a bit of comparison shopping helps. Sunderland publishes its winter stock every year — 13,500 tonnes, ready to go. Merton starts filling its stores “as early as summer” and tells residents so, with a number attached: 2,000 tonnes. Sefton names the depot, the tonnage, the fleet.
Bristol’s website tells you there are 750 grit bins, and that major roads get treated first. That’s it. No tonnage. No start date. No figure to hold anyone to.
One council photographs its gritters loading up for the cameras. The other apparently prefers you simply trust the process. With fingers crossed, and um. You know. Hope for the best, while not planning for the worst.
Ask the People Who Actually Waited.
And what happens when the trust runs a little thin? On 30 December 2025, a Bristol resident reported a missing grit bin on FixMyStreet, warning the council that snow was forecast the following week. The council logged it as “under investigation.” Snow. Under investigation. Like falling on Bristol is a crime.
By 7 January, the same resident described the road as “like a sheet of ice.” By 5 February — over five weeks after the original report — the case was closed, with the words: “we don’t think any further action is needed at this time.” Maybe just some ice skates.
A second, separate report on 5 January — an empty grit bin outside 173 Ilchester Crescent, on a road the resident called “very dangerous” in icy weather — was still marked “under investigation” more than a week later. Investigation, it seems, is the council’s longest-running season of all.
Two residents. Two winters’ worth of patience. One conclusion apiece: the process, once again, moved slower than the ice.
And, presumably, a third kind of resident too — the ones who’ve stopped waiting entirely. The same instinct that sends the sensible ones round the car boot sales in August for Christmas presents will, sooner or later, send another swathe of them online.
Ordering their own bags of rock salt for next-day delivery, because relying on the council to sort it in time has stopped being a realistic plan. It’s not resourcefulness born of enthusiasm. It’s resourcefulness born of experience. One may think.
The Question Nobody Can Actually Answer.
Now. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Okay. I’ve oversold it. Just interesting, then. Asking Bristol City Council to confirm its winter grit stock levels ahead of time sounds simple enough — except this is the same council the Information Commissioner’s Office first hit with an enforcement notice back in March 2024, over its “consistently poor” record on Freedom of Information requests.
The council appealed. It lost. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed Bristol’s case on 6 August 2025 — Bristol City Council v Information Commissioner [2025] UKFTT 948 — finding the ICO had exercised its discretion correctly throughout.
A second enforcement notice followed in September 2025, this time over Subject Access Requests, with the ICO stating plainly that the council’s approach “demonstrates a poor organisational attitude towards data rights and compliance with the law.”
Council leader Tony Dyer has since acknowledged there’s “much more work to do.” The backlog has shrunk, from 147 outstanding requests in March 2024 to 77 by September 2025. The proportion answered on time in that same window, however, actually fell — from 75% to 72%. Progress, evidently, is relative. So. Gratifying to know it’s only the frontlog we have to consider now. Whatever that is.
It seems the honest answer to “has the council stocked up in good time?” isn’t yes or no. Nobody outside the building can currently get an answer to that question at all — because the machinery that would answer it doesn’t answer anything, on time, ever.
A council that won’t confirm whether it has ordered salt is, at minimum, consistent.
Put the two timelines side by side and the joke writes itself. A Freedom of Information request is legally owed a response within 20 working days. Bristol’s own figures show it doesn’t reliably manage that.
The missing grit bin on FixMyStreet took over five weeks to close, and closed with nothing actually fixed. At this rate, a resident would have better odds getting their road gritted by filing an FOI request asking someone to come and do it by hand. And, preferably, before next year’s snowfall.
One More Exhibit for the Catalogue.
Regular readers of whatever it is I’m supposed to write will recognise the shape of this by now. It’s the same shape as the Tower House freehold sale. The same shape as the EBLN overspend. The same shape as Bottle Yard Studios.
Different department, different budget line, same underlying habit: decide late, communicate less, and let residents find out the hard way that nobody was minding the calendar. Melting away. You know. Like snow.
The grit isn’t a one-off failure of planning. It’s exhibit twelve in a catalogue that already runs to eleven — not to mention a wider habit the council seems no closer to shaking.
The Excuse, Pre-Loaded.
And if the grit does run short this winter? The explanation writes itself before the first snowflake falls. Global supply chains. The Middle East. Anything, in other words, except the plainer possibility — that nobody ordered enough, early enough, the way supermarkets somehow manage every single year without anyone having to ask.
Britain has form on this. British Rail famously blamed “the wrong type of snow” for grinding trains to a halt back in 1991, and the phrase has followed the country round ever since, mostly because it’s never really stopped being true.
Somewhere between now and February, expect a version of it applied to the roads — not the wrong type of snow this time, perhaps, but certainly the wrong type of excuse, delivered with the same straight face.
Fitting, really, given that this summer already has the wrong type of sun — too hot, too dry, too many wildfires, and apparently nobody’s fault either. Except the Sun’s. So, yes. Let’s all blame the Sun, and wait for Trump to impose severe restrictions on it. You know. The way he does. On most things.
The Paint That Already Couldn’t Cope.
Oh, and before I forget. There’s a second layer to this, and it’s sitting in plain view on Centre Promenade. Well. It was. Until it faded. In September 2025, Bristol City Council unveiled Our Common Ground — a 700 square metre painted mural by Bristol artist Oshii, replacing the old sunken fountains, funded jointly by the council and the Business Improvement District at a cost of £61,000.
It had to be repainted within a month. It has continued deteriorating since. Deputy council leader Heather Mack told Politics West in February 2026 that she was “embarrassed, disappointed and frustrated” that public money had gone into it.
The council’s own explanation is that the artwork uses a “specialist road line marking paint,” intended for the ground but applied to a smoother surface than the tarmac it’s normally used on — with the council saying it’s still investigating why some sections are flaking more than others. Council for: “We got it wrong.” Apparently, Dulux emulsion doesn’t quite work on such an application, and the person who ordered it has since updated their Specsavers appointment.
Anyway. Whatever the cause, the paint has already failed to survive ordinary Bristol conditions — rain, footfall, a change of surface underneath it. It’s not the first thing that patch of ground has had to survive, either. This is the same spot a statue was once dragged across before being tipped into the harbour. The paint, by comparison, has had it easy.
Which raises an obvious question nobody in the council’s public explanation has addressed: what happens to it once the same road salt that’s meant to be protecting drivers on Gloucester Road starts working its way across a promenade already flaking a month after launch?
As you’ll, I’m almost certain, be aware. Rock salt is corrosive. That’s the entire point of it — it breaks down ice by breaking down the surface tension holding it together, and it does the same, more slowly, to whatever it sits on.
Nobody has said publicly whether Centre Promenade gets gritted, or whether Our Common Ground was ever tested against it. Maybe there was no need to. Given it provides a free ice rink. Under certain conditions.
If it does, and it wasn’t, the council may find itself repainting the same mural for a second unrelated reason inside its first twelve months — with the maintenance budget already earmarked at £3,000 to £5,000 a year for five years, and repairs only possible once temperatures climb back above 10°C in spring.
And. By the way. One paint failure the council won’t fully explain is unfortunate. A second one, arriving with the first frost, would start to look like a pattern the council keeps declining to anticipate.
Same Sun, Same Shortfall.
Meanwhile. The bikinis are still out. The barbecues are still going. And somewhere behind all of it, the plastic skulls are already in a lorry, the crisps are already on the shelf, and the grit — if anyone could actually find out — either is or isn’t.
That’s the whole story, really. One organisation knows exactly what it’s doing months in advance. The other won’t tell you, doesn’t tell you, and will blame the weather when it happens anyway.
Which is, in itself, a very British trick. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter, too wet in between, and somehow never quite the right amount of anything at any point in the year.
The weather gets blamed for everything, and yet nobody in this story has actually planned around it — not for the heatwave sparking wildfires in July, not for the ice that shuts a road in January.
The weather isn’t the excuse. It’s the one thing everybody already knew was coming. It’ll simply happen, quietly, the way these things always simply happen — except, this time, everyone watching will have seen it coming for months.
So. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts. Somebody, somewhere, already has. Allegedly.
Sources and Citations.
Yahoo News UK / The Conversation, “Wildfires: why disposable BBQs are being banned from some parks and beaches” — theconversation.com
Morning Advertiser, “Fire service urges public to ‘go to the pub’ instead of BBQs” — morningadvertiser.co.uk
Bristol City Council, “Roads and pavements in severe winter weather” — bristol.gov.uk
FixMyStreet report 8604964, missing grit bin, reported 30 December 2025, closed 5 February 2026 — fixmystreet.bristol.gov.uk
FixMyStreet report 8627962, empty grit bin outside 173 Ilchester Crescent, reported 5 January 2026 — fixmystreet.bristol.gov.uk
Sunderland City Council, Winter Service Policy — sunderland.gov.uk
Merton Council, “Merton ready for the cold snap” — news.merton.gov.uk
Sefton Council, “Grit ready for winter” — sefton.gov.uk
Information Commissioner’s Office, enforcement notice to Bristol City Council over Freedom of Information Act compliance, March 2024 — ico.org.uk
Bristol City Council v Information Commissioner [2025] UKFTT 948 (GRC), First-tier Tribunal decision, 6 August 2025
Information Commissioner’s Office, enforcement notice to Bristol City Council over Subject Access Requests, September 2025 — ico.org.uk
BBC, “’Culture of non-transparency’ at city council” — bbc.co.uk
Bristol City Council, “Centre Promenade works” — bristol.gov.uk
Bristol247, “Deputy leader ‘embarrassed, disappointed and frustrated’ with state of Centre artwork” — bristol247.com
BBC, “Faded art makes council deputy feel ‘embarrassed’” (quoting Heather Mack’s remarks to Politics West) — bbc.co.uk
Sainsbury’s Online Grocery Store, “Sainsbury’s Pigs in Blankets x20 400g,” listed in stock — sainsburys.co.uk, checked 2 August 2026
John Langley is Bristol’s most prolific blogger, writing since 2010.
© 2026 John Langley aka www.thealmightygob.com