THE Mayor of Camelford has criticised Cornwall Council for not providing enough salt in the town during the recent icy weather conditions.

Cllr Brian Lush told the 'Post' that cars were unable to get in and out of the town's Churchfield Car Park because, for a couple of days, it was not gritted.

This in turn made access to the doctor's surgery — which is located through the car park — very difficult, with medical staff being forced to park their vehicles on the main road.

Cllr Lush said: "We were hailing passing grit lorries into the car park, but they didn't want to know."

On Thursday afternoon, a council lorry made it into the car park and spread some grit outside the doctors' surgery and at the entrance and they also filled the grit bin.

However, Cllr Lush said the conditions caused chaos in Camelford. People living in College Road — which includes Highermead Care Home — were unable to drive into the town and conditions around Anvil Court, the sheltered housing development, were treacherous.

The Cornwall Council One Stop Shop, which is located in the council offices in College Road was closed from Tuesday to Friday, as access problems made it difficult for staff to get to work.

The Co-op stores at the top of town closed its gates to stop cars driving down into the steep car park, which meant lorries were backed up on the main road with deliveries.

Camelford Primary School and Sir James Smith's Community School closed for a number of days and many Adult Education classes were cancelled due to untreated car parks.

"Some estates are like a skating rink. The pavements in town were in a terrible state," said Cllr Lush.

"Things are more or less back to normal now but a lot of the shops didn't open so if you wanted to shop locally you couldn't. People were moaning that they had to go to Tesco in Launceston to get bread and stuff like that, but by Thursday the deliveries were getting in."

Camelford Town Council sent emails and made phone calls to Cornwall Council regarding the problem, and the clerk had even raised the issue with them before the snow fell last week.

Cllr Lush added: "We've missed NCDC [the former North Cornwall District Council], that's the problem. When NCDC was around we got our car park done every day and we got other places done."

For more Camelford and Delabole snow pictures, see this week's 'Post'.