The cabinet member responsible for the collection of waste and recycling in Swindon has faced calls to resign.

Conservative councillor Matt Vallender had asked a question in writing about “how many missed bin collections, including dropped work, have been recorded since May 19th, 2023?”

Missed collections are classified by the council as to where crews haven’t collected waste left out by mistake – dropped work is the term used for a crew deliberately missing out on a house or a street in order to get the rest of the round done.

Councillor Chris Watts' written answer was: “There have been 18,769 missed collection reports since 19th May 2023.

“Dropped work and missed collections are two different measures and therefore it is not appropriate that they are combined.

“It is also not an appropriate use of data to cumulate dropped work as this would double account for single properties. As such it is not possible to provide a total number of dropped properties as this data is not held.”

The Conservatives say there have been more than one million instances of both missed and dropped collections, but the Labour cabinet says that includes double counting.

Cllr Vallender followed up his question, asking: “Will the cabinet members take responsibility and resign?”

Cllr Watts said: “No. I won’t resign over the mistakes made by the previous administration – I’m just clearing them up.”