A CITY centre “rapid repairs” pilot is to be set up in Glasgow to tackle poor quality streets.

The team will react to reports of broken pavement slabs or street furniture, lighting and flyposting.

Councillors are being asked to approve the scheme which will prioritise commercial areas of the city centre, focussing on roads around transport hubs like Central Station, Queen Street Station and Buchanan Bus Station as well as main shopping areas.

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The council said the “rapid repairs” response is needed to deal with “small scale but high impact issues”.

The programme will be in addition to planned maintenance schedules.

The council has a budget of £400,000 for the pilot which is expected to start in January.

Half of the cash to fund the pilot has been raised from developer contributions through the planning application procedures.

The timescale for the “rapid repairs” is up to five days for the request to be reviewed and up to 10 days for a decision to be reached.

Once a decision has been made there will be up to five days for requests deemed “Urgent/Life or Limb” and up to 28 days for “non-urgent” requests.

The pilot is for streets outside the Avenues project currently being delivered in the city centre.

George Gillespie, Executive Director of Neighbourhoods said, in a report to councillors: “Interventions will primarily focus on areas of concern raised by development/investment stakeholders which may otherwise affect perceptions of place, thereby impacting inward investment and regeneration opportunities.

“Eligible activities will relate to public space only. The scheme is about improving the streetscape – it will not cover private land or property.”

He added: “The scheme is predominantly intended to provide a fast response to smaller areas that appear neglected or which exhibit poor-quality public realm features that are undermining investment opportunities in the target areas.

“This may include repairs or replacement of pavement slabs, street furniture, bollards, lighting, stickers/flyposting, street washing, and/or other measures that improve the key routes and spaces.”

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The report also said that graffiti removal teams will only respond and remove graffiti if it is offensive.

Mr Gillespie added: “Due to resource limitations and high demand across the city, graffiti removal will only be actioned for offensive cases, in which case removal will take place within five days.”