Claims that leading councillors in Wokingham 'tried to hide' where the £1.96m for changes to weekly bin collections will come from have been strongly refuted.

Colin George, a former Wokingham Town councillor, says leading councillors voted to take the almost £2 million required for new wheelie bins scheme from a pot of money reserved for other matters.

He claims they then tried to hide this by using different names for the funding pot in official council documents, and that the move could risk the authority's financial stability.

But leading Wokingham councillor Ian Shenton has refuted the claim and said the decision was 'entirely correct' and 'will save taxpayers money'.

Wokingham Borough’s executive committee of leading councillors agreed in March this year to switch to alternating fortnightly recycling and general waste collections.

It agreed to pay for the £1.96 million pounds this would cost – including £1.5 million for new wheelie bins – from a reserve called the Waste Equalisation Fund.

But Mr George says this money is reserved only for the joint waste disposal contract between Wokingham Borough, Bracknell Forest and Reading Borough Councils – and isn’t for rubbish collections.

READ MORE: ‘False information’ spread about Wokingham bin collection changes

He says this is risky as it could leave the council short of cash if unexpected costs related to the waste disposal contract – known as the RE3 contract – crop up. And he says the council “have tried to hide” this by not using the fund’s other name used in previous documents, the RE3 Equalisation Fund.

Mr George told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “They’ve changed what the money was supposed to be spent on. It’s for the disposal of waste, not the collection.

“If the waste disposal contract fell apart, say in a big dispute between the three councils, or the machinery catches fire at one of the depots, the earmarked reserve is turned over until it can all be sorted.

“It’s an insurance policy and they’ve taken it all away.” He added: “If they had been open about it, I wouldn’t have a problem. But they tried to hide it because people didn’t want to see they were using reserves for a new capital project.”

But Wokingham Borough Council’s executive member for Environment, Sport and Leisure Ian Shenton said: “The funding for the move to a different system of weekly collections is entirely correct and was approved by the council’s chief finance officer.

“The Waste PFI equalisation fund is not ringfenced for the Re3 contract, it is a fund set aside for changes to both our waste collection and disposal services and therefore this is a perfect use for it.”

He added: “To be clear, this is an investment that will save taxpayers money and will repay into the equalisation fund in the coming years to make sure we have a sensible balance for any contingencies in the future.”