The Renfrew Bridge cost £117m and was supposed to transform the area. How did one storm knock it out for months?

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43 councillors, one grilling – but has Renfrewshire council really answered the questions?

Despite the last minute nature of the meeting, it was nearly a full council which packed into Renfrewshire House on Monday. The area’s 43 elected representatives had been summoned to a special council meeting, called by the Renfrewshire Labour group.

Officially, what was about to commence was the first stage of what promises to be a long saga: investigating exactly who is responsible for the failure of a multi-million-pound bridge, which is just over a year old. Yet on its first major test — Storm Boelo, which hit on 24 October — Renfrew Bridge took a battering that knocked it straight out of action.

The town's flood barriers, part of a £10m prevention scheme installed in 2016, weren’t raised. The resulting damage means the £117m bridge will be closed for the foreseeable future, with a price tag for repairs yet to be forthcoming. 

But the blame game goes further than the bridge itself. The Bell has been looking into the events of that weekend, and discovered another potential breakdown in vital council communications: an AI call handling service that potentially stopped passing on up to 81 reports about rising water on the bridge to human officials. 

Absorbing the majority of heat at Monday’s meeting was Gordon McNeil, the council's Director of Environment, Housing and Infrastructure, who frantically scribbled in his notepad, attempting to keep up with the questions being thrown at him. Was the maintenance schedule for the bridge up to date? Why did nobody raise the town’s flood barriers? Why weren’t residents, who called the council as flood waters rose, able to speak to a member of staff?