RESIDENTS have slammed the council after a town centre was 'turned into an ice rink'.

Darwen residents said the site of the former three-day market had become slippery on Tuesday after they said no grit had been put done in the area despite the plummeting temperatures.

But council bosses said they had been caught off guard by the weather.

One resident said: "Darwen town centre is like an ice rink. Quite a few people have fallen over, one being a 70-year-old lady who waited hours for an ambulance to turn up.

"A member of the public has now gritted it so its safer to walk on but isn't this the councils responsibility?"

Darwen mayor Cllr Roy Davies said they had never had this problem in Darwen before, because up until last year caretakers had managed the town centre.

He said: "I reported the situation to the council after I was told there had been five separate incidents of people falling on the ice.

"I was down town and people were coming up to me and telling me people were falling because no grit had been put down on Tuesday morning.

"This has never happened before we used to have caretakers who managed the town centre and took care of gritting.

"Now they've all been taken to Blackburn."

A council spokesman said they had been caught of guard by the weather which had caused a number of traffic collisions.

He said: “We had a challenging period with the weather in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

"On Monday evening we did a pre-grit and did all routes from 6pm-10pm and we then followed this up with a spot check of the routes at 3am.

"However, a couple of unexpected showers came in and washed the grit away and then the temperature plummeted and re-froze the areas.

“A number of routes had road traffic crashes, the M65 and Belmont Road were particularly affected along with the town centres. Although this is rare and does present us with challenges.

"We work hard to respond in adverse conditions and follow weather reports closely to plan our gritting routes.

"People can check progress and updates on our Facebook page at BwD Roads.”