Lib Dems Jen Simpson & Councillor Frank O'Kelly regularly help out on Sundays with other Cippenham volunteers to clear litter & fly-tipping, & local streams/ponds, as widely as they can in Cippenham. The photo is from October when the volunteers tidied up the area around the Cippenham War Memorial, before Remembrance Sunday.
Jen says: "doing what I can to look after our environment matters to me."
Lib Dem Cllr for Cippenham Village, Frank O'Kelly, helped local volunteers establish the Stream Team who do what they can to improve the environment in Cippenham. Sometimes they have to go back to the same areas to repeat litter picking & removal of fly-tipping, but trying to make the areas look as clean as possible is important, otherwise the problems just get worse.
The Stream Team also improve waterways such as Mill Stream, the Village Pond and a major project to restore Deerwood Park (between Earls Lane & Lower Cippenham Lane).
Areas litter-picked at least once include over the last few years include: part of Brook Path area, Eagle Road, Eltham Way-Richards Way path, Erica Close, parts of Lodge Farm estate, Mallard Drive, & Streamside.
There is a limit to how much volunteers can achieve, so Lib Dems also joined other councillors in calling on Slough's Tory-run Borough Council to do a better job with the upkeep of public spaces, shrubbery, grass verges, highways, as well as dealing with litter & fly-tipping.
At a full Council meting on Thurs 23 April, Cllr Sabia Akram supported a motion calling for a borough-wide audit of public places to identify areas in need of improvement, including pavements, highways, parks and play spaces covering safety, maintenance, lighting, signage, accessibility and cleanliness.
The motion also attacked the Tory administration for recently receiving a ‘red’ rating by the Department for Transport for failing to meet the minimum standards in repairing potholes and maintenance of the public network of roads. Additionally, it called for the Tories to publish a public realm improvement strategy within six months for the Scrutiny Committee to consider.
Commenting on these proposals, Councillor Akram said, “These are reasonable proposals put forward which I believe all councillors can agree on. This administration always talks about creating a safer, greener and healthier borough - auditing maintenance of green and play spaces, roads, pedestrian access, street cleaning and parking enforcement is a sensible way forward and one which Liberal Democrats fully support”.
Earlier, at the March 2026 budget meeting, Liberal Democrats brought forward proposals to try and fix some of the problems with budgeted savings elsewhere to spend on two extra civic enforcement officers as well as a new street cleaning vehicle to address residents’ concerns. However, these were roundly rejected by the Tory administration.
Also speaking in support of the motion debated on 23rd April, Lib Dem Councillor Zaffar Ajaib said “Over a series of six ‘community conversations’ Liberal Democrats held in and around our borough with local residents, we heard first hand the dissatisfaction local residents have with this Tory council. For example, our recycling rate is in the ‘red’ and is well below the national average at just 24.9% and there has been an overall reported increase in fly-tipping since May 2023, with an increase of 187 incidents, from 1,258 to 1,445 each year”.
Councillor Ajaib added, “residents also reported to us ‘moon sized’ craters which do not meet the threshold to get fixed and that the lack of parking enforcement officers outside of Slough Central being an issue”.
Tory councillors defeated the motion to conduct an audit of all these issues and publish a strategy to deal with them.
