What delivers in practice?
Road winter service operates under pressure: uncertain forecasts, tight timelines, stretched resources, and high public expectation. When conditions deteriorate, there's no room for theory – only what actually works.
Cold Comfort 2026 focuses on real-world delivery. How decisions are made when certainty is impossible. What genuinely improves outcomes on the ground. How responsibility and risk are shared across contractual relationships. And how the sector adapts as weather becomes more volatile and unpredictable.
This year's conference explores:
What Actually Improves Winter Service Outcomes
Operational approaches, tools, technologies, and practices that have demonstrably improved performance, safety, resilience, or value in live winter service environments.
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
How forecasting, data, professional judgement, experience, and organisational context combine to shape decisions in time-critical and high-risk situations.
Contractors, Clients, and Shared Risk
How roles, responsibilities, incentives, and accountability are structured and managed across contractual and delivery relationships – including lessons from both success and failure.
Resilience Beyond "Winter Service as Usual"
Climate change, adaptation, and increasing weather volatility: what these mean for the future of road winter service planning and delivery.
Cold Comfort brings together local highway authorities, contractors, meteorologists, equipment suppliers, and consultants for practical discussion and knowledge exchange that matters.
Where the industry meets
Supported by National Highways and DfT
Meet winter road maintenance leaders
As the UK's leading roads and extreme weather conference, Cold Comfort brings together highway management and operation leaders from central government and local councils to examine winter maintenance across the UK's strategic road network.
