Glasgow councillors say more needs to be done to tackle overgrown gullies and and weed-clogged paths.

They were responding to a dire report revealed plunging public confidence in council services.

Findings from the Glasgow Household Survey, carried out by polling firm Ipsos, showed only 40 per cent of residents were happy with local services, down from 48 per cent.

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Those respondents were dissatisfied with road maintenance, waste and refuse collection, recycling and lack of affordable services.

Complaints were also made about the lack of/ poor maintenance of parks and green spaces as well as council tax being too high or poor value for money.

During the operations and scrutiny committee, elected members zoomed in on the particular complaings about overgrown pavements and litter in gullies.

Ccouncillor Stephen Docherty said: “From what I have seen there is a clear decline in satisfaction across city council services and my question is why is this the case?

“For example [the satisfaction] on the repairs of roads has declined, the actual delivery of service, cleaning out gullies, the weed control on pavements.

“I have an unfair bias because I am a horticulturalist and I am looking at areas which I have been told are sprayed when they are not – so I am just looking at why we are getting poor service.

“Some of the areas have not been swept in years – that’s fact, some of the pavements have not been sprayed – that’s fact.

“There are gullies in my ward, where there are no cars, that are choked. It’s a failure of service that’s why people are not satisfied."

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Councillor Eunis Jassemi added: “This is pretty dire, the statistics show a number of chronic failures from this council and the financial strain from central government.

“It is our residents that are now feeling the pinch because of those decisions. It is incredibly worrying about where the trends are heading.”

A council officer said that they were just as disappointed with the results of the survey and the gradual decline in public opinion and satisfaction.

They said: “I think in terms of the actual road condition, we carry out a survey every year which is carried out across Scotland which is done by machine and is very objective measurement of the measure of roads.

“Our road condition index has stayed relatively stable over the last few years and it has slightly improved this year.

“We are seeing a little bit of a disparity between what the survey tells us our actual condition is and people’s opinion and perception of road conditions. That road condition index that we are achieving is above the Scottish average so our roads are theoretically better than most of our Scottish peers.”

It was also pointed out that gully cleaning is a difficult task for the council who need to ask residents to move their cars in order to carry out this service.

The officer continued: “We do have a very complex programme where we have to issue temporary road restrictions and ask people to move their cars. If they fail to move their cars then we are unable to carry out cleaning in those streets.

“So there is a properly planned and executed programme of gully works across the city.

“With regards to weed control we do invite other colleagues from parks and cleansing to put their resources in with us at the same time so that once we have the cars cleared from the streets, to allow them access for weed control.

“We do try and coordinate those efforts so all services can get access to complete street cleaning, gully cleaning and weed control at the same time.

“We risk assess all defects that we are notified of but we do not have the budget to respond to every single defect that is reported so we do prioritise them on a risk based assessment.”