I HEARTILY endorse Colin McKellar’s plea for Glasgow City Council to devote more attention to clearing of drains (Letters, August 31). However, he fails to address the major cause of the problem: uncontrolled kerbside parking.

I frequently visit the Broomhill, Partick and Jordanhill areas which he offers as examples, and I agree they illustrate the issue very well. However, I urge him and others to visit my home areas of North Kelvinside to see the problem at its worst. South of the River Kelvin is a controlled parking area, and the well-spaced, paying places are seldom used. North of the Kelvin, there is nose-to-tail parking in every nook and cranny. Service lanes are frequently blocked by parked cars, preventing rubbish uplift.

Very few of those parking are local residents. Indeed, recently, I met a former neighbour, now resident elsewhere within the city, who was leaving her car on Wilton Street for a fortnight, while she went on holiday

With controlled parking throughout the city, parking spaces will allow pedestrians, people with prams, wheelchair users to pass between vehicles to cross the road. Parking can be suspended for intervals of half a day over regular intervals to permit gutters to be swept and drains to be cleared. Almost all localised flooding is due to blocked drains. Make all parking controlled and then we can clear the drains and gutters regularly.

Alasdair Macdonald,

Flat 1/1, 10 Dryburgh Gardens,

Glasgow.