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Parents band together to clear ice outside north-east primary school

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While the weather has been some of the most severe the region has experienced, the conditions have highlighted the resilience of communities across the north-east.

There have been countless stories of kind-hearted residents coming to the aid of their more vulnerable neighbours who have been trapped in their homes due to the treacherous surfaces outside.

And, faced with the prospect of their children making the dangerous trip to school, a group of parents banded together to clear the walkways and paths around Auchterellon Primary, in Ellon.

The town has been one of the worst-affected by the weather, with Balmoral Avenue closed for several hours on Sunday because it deteriorated to an impassable state.

Malcolm Harvey, a politics and international relations lecturer at Aberdeen University, was one of the parents who grabbed his shovel to take part.

He said: “There’s a Facebook group for all the parents and one of them, who is a teacher at Meldrum Academy, had driven past the primary school and saw how bad it was.

“The janitors had told her that they were responsible for the school grounds but couldn’t do anything about the surrounding streets so she suggested we all pitch in.

“There were about a dozen of us in the end, including a guy with a sledgehammer, some of the ice was three-four inches deep.

“So we did what we could, obviously we couldn’t get to every part, and messaged the school and asked if the teachers could direct the kids in the right way.”

Mr Harvey has lived in the town for almost four years and says this is the worst winter weather he has experienced.

“We’ve never seen anything quite like this,” he added.

“My parents-in-law have been here for 10 years and I remember visiting them when it was bad in 2010, but that didn’t seem to last that long.

“It just seems that the councils have been caught short for whatever reason.”