Questions have been directed at Renfrewshire Council over its drainage work as severe weather events continue to cause disruption in the area.

Heavy rainfall once again caused bouts of flooding earlier this month, including at hotspots like Linwood Toll, with similar problems experienced in October.

In a report to Wednesday’s infrastructure, land and environment policy board, the council said it had made a “significant improvement” to its gully maintenance over the last 12 to 18 months.

The paper said: “In the last year alone the service has attended to almost 30,000 gullies on a proactive basis, in addition to any responses to reactive requests.

“The service will continue to evolve and in the next year will look to adopt mobile technology to further enhance the service provided.”

Councillor Eddie Devine, who represents Paisley Southeast, asked: “It says in the paper that you’ve visited 30,000 gullies, drains. Why are we still getting so much flooding? If you know where the flooding is, why are you not fixing it?”

Gerard Hannah, the council’s head of climate, public protection and roads, said “capacity issues” were a common occurrence at certain locations in the local authority.

He said: “For the gullies we visit, obviously we’ve highlighted in the report the vast improvements we’ve made.

“We don’t say we get everything right every single time and that work is still going on to keep improving the service as we go.

“However, what we’re often faced with is capacity issues at the locations we visit.

“When there are flooding locations, nine times out of ten it’s nothing to do with the cleaning of the gullies, it’s a capacity issue or there is a blockage in pipework underneath the gully.

“That being said, we continue to see where we can improve the service and be more efficient where we possibly can. That work continues.

“Part of the roads programme over the last number of years has been to set aside specific amounts of money for drainage investments as part of the road improvements and not purely make it about resurfacing, because if you resurface the road and still get water on it then it’s just money you’re throwing away, because it’s not going to resolve the problem.”

According to the report, there is an ongoing issue with the capacity of the combined sewer network in the area of Linwood Toll and gully cleaning is having “no positive impact” on the risk of flooding there.

It said council officers have spoken to Scottish Water about this and the need for investment at the site.