A LEADING councillor has denied parts of her cabinet position were taken away due to the ongoing missed waste and recycling collection fiasco.

The Royal Borough’s waste collection contractor, Serco, was recently heavily criticised for consistent missed bin pickups by the new lead member for environmental service and waste, councillor David Coppinger (Conservative: Bray) – who is also cabinet member for planning and Maidenhead.

Councillor Donna Stimson (Conservative: St. Mary’s) was the lead member for environmental services and waste who was holding Serco to account before this switch – which led to some speculation if she quit or was let go from these two responsibilities.

Speaking to the Observer, Cllr Stimson said she started having conversations with the leader of the council, councillor Andrew Johnson (Conservative: Hurley and Walthams) about removing these two roles from her almost a month ago due to having a ‘large portfolio’ and ‘not making sense’ to have all these roles together.

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Cllr Stimson will still be lead member for climate change, sustainability, parks, and countryside.

She said: “I’m in charge of climate change and sustainability as well as parks and countryside – so, already those are portfolios that take up an enormous amount of time.

“Climate change particularly is something that’s a huge agenda with us needing to achieve carbon neutral by 2050, or preferably before, and that agenda needs to tie in cabinet and all the portfolios need to work together in order to achieve that.

“To have an agenda like environmental services – which is something that’s taking up energy – is something that’s not really practical.”

She added: “Nothing sinister at all – just a practical decision to move it.”

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Going forward, Cllr Coppinger will now be holding Serco to account where he announced an agreement was met for the waste collection contractor to send out additional trucks and crew this week to deal with the backlog.

Bins missed on Monday will now be collected September 14 and those missed between September 8-11 will be picked up this Saturday or Sunday (September 12-13).