the council are under a duty to take reasonable steps to make sure that members of the public are reasonably safe. If the pavement does not look safe to you, don't walk on it. They cannot be expected to grit every road and pavement - it would be impossible even if they had the budget to do so. they therefore take a view and grit the roads that they think need to be cleared the most (i.e. busiest routes into towns etc). I agree that the salt bins should have been filled when we were aware that the snow was coming - we have only one small one near us and my hubby gritted our road on Friday and said then that there wasn't much salt left. But you can't sue the Council if you slip on ice on a road that hasn't been gritted.