RUSH hour commuters were gridlocked in Burnley early today after a light snowfall turned the town centre into a "skating rink".

Traffic was reduced to a crawl on main routes leading into town as the burst of winter weather caused chaos on the roads.

Hundreds of people were late for work and school and only 50 of the 750 pupils at St Hilda's RC High School made it in on time. Burnley Council today said they had gritted the roads, but were set to investigate whether they could have done anything different to prevent the problems.

Dave Wood, head of the engineering section at Burnley Council, said: "We were out gritting from 11.30pm to 4am. We inspected the principal roads at 5am and there was no problem whatsoever. We again inspected at 7am when there was a problem and we had to call them out again. "The problem was because the salt we put down last night must have been washed away by rain from the night before. We will be having an investigation to see if we could have done anything different."

Sergeant Russell Gregory, of the police's traffic unit, said: "It was absolute chaos in Burnley this morning. We had a jack-knifed lorry in Westway which caused serious congestion and traffic backing up to Junction 10 on the M65 (Gannow Top) and another jack-knifed lorry in Centenary Way which was blocked from Yorkshire Street to Manchester Road. The whole area was extremely congested.

"Traffic couldn't get up Brunshaw Road and there were problems in Todmorden Road between the Woodman's Arms and Bacup Lane Ends.

"The problem is sheet ice on the roads which made conditions extremely hazardous."

One driver said it took him more than an hour to travel less than a mile from Gannow Top down into Burnley centre while another motorist described the bottom end of Colne Road as a "skating rink".

At St Hilda's, teacher John Livesey said: "Teachers and pupils from the Accrington, Blackburn and Rossendale areas have managed to get here, it seems to be just Burnley which has been hit."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.