Heavy snow forces 150 schools to close in county

More than 150 schools are shut in Staffordshire and hundreds of homes hit by a power cut after Storm Goretti brought heavy snow to the county.

An amber weather warning for the West Midlands was in place until 0900 GMT on Friday, with a yellow warning remaining until 1200.

Many head teachers reported severe weather conditions and said they had concerns about the safety of pupils, families and staff getting to and from their sites.

However one parent, Dan Bowman, in Werrington, said he was "quite surprised" his children's schools were open.

"They've closed for less than this before and, when I went to bed last night, I thought there's no way," he said.

"My kids are very disappointed, they're both at different schools, both open, both disappointed to be in school.

"I'm also privately disappointed as I would have liked an extra hour in bed."

For many other pupils though, this was the third time in a week their school had been shut because of wintry weather, after disruption began on Monday.

Several of the closed schools said they would be switching to teaching pupils remotely.

Gritting teams started treating roads on Thursday evening from 17:00 using ploughs to clear routes, a Staffordshire County Council spokesperson said.

They worked through the night and were back in action on Friday morning as the snow fell.

In the south of the county, the spokesperson said crews treated all main routes while, in the north, all main routes were gritted four times.

At one point on Friday, about 900 homes were without power due to the storm and National Grid said it had engineers working to restore their network.

Drivers were warned not to travel unless it was really necessary and rail passengers were told to prepare for disrupted journeys.

A West Midlands Railway spokesperson said they were running a reduced timetable on Friday and added emergency speed restrictions could be introduced.

As the snow melts, the county council spokesperson warned people to expect surface flooding in places.

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