A major incident has been declared by Birmingham City Council after the ongoing bin strike left 17,000 tonnes of uncollected rubbish piling high in the streets.
Masses of putrid waste remains yet to be cleared across the city, which residents claim has led to ‘rats becoming the size of cats’ as they feast on discarded food.
Bankrupt Birmingham City Council claimed the problem has been compounded by striking binmen blocking its depots with pickets – meaning vehicles struggle to leave to collect waste.
Members of the Unite union in Birmingham are holding an all-out strike which has led to rubbish piling up in the streets.
The council says daily blocking of its depots by pickets has meant workers cannot get their vehicles out to collect waste from residents.
Declaring a major incident allows the council to increase the availability of street cleansing and fly-tipping removal with an extra 35 vehicles and crews around the city – and it also allows the council to explore further support from neighbouring authorities and the Government.
John Cotton, leader of Birmingham City Council, said: ‘It’s regrettable that we have had to take this step, but we cannot tolerate a situation that is causing harm and distress to communities across Birmingham.
‘I respect the right to strike and protest, however actions on the picket line must be lawful and sadly the behaviour of some now means we are seeing a significant impact on residents and the city’s environment.
Piles of rubbish and overflowing bins have been seen across Birmingham amid strike action
Members of the Unite union in Birmingham are holding an all-out strike which has led to rubbish piling up in the streets – demonstrators are seen here earlier this month
Discarded waste which remained uncollected is seen here in Shakespeare Street, Sparkhill
Birmingham City Council leader John Cotton pictured) has declared a ‘major incident’
‘Unless we declare a major incident and deploy the waste service’s contingency plan, then we would be unable to clear the backlog of waste on the streets or improve the frequency of collections.’
Almost 400 council bin workers in Birmingham began indefinite strike action earlier this month as part of a row over jobs and pay.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick laid the blame for the chaos at the door of the Labour-run administration, by posting a picture of a street on the border of Birmingham and neighbouring Bromsgrove.
On the side of the residential road overseen by Birmingham City Council, bin bags piled high, while the side managed by Tory-run Bromsgrove was completely clear – with Mr Jenrick writing: ‘Night and day.’
The Unite union says its members face pay cuts after the scrapping of waste collection and recycling officer roles – but Labour-run Birmingham City Council says its offer is ‘fair and reasonable’.
Birmingham City Council has said the ‘escalation’ of industrial action would mean greater disruption to residents despite a ‘fair and reasonable offer’ made to Unite members – and the council also disputes Unite’s claims that 150 workers could lose £8,000 per year in pay.
And it has insisted plans to restructure the service were a crucial part of the authority’s efforts to become financially sustainable.
In September 2023 the council effectively declared itself bankrupt after facing a £760million equal pay bill and an £80million overspend on an IT project – triggering a restructuring aimed at saving £300million over two years.
Police have been at a picket line earlier this month to help get bin wagons out of the Atlas Road council depot in Birmingham
Refuse bags are seen left discarded in the Bordesley Green district of England’s second city
Members of the Unite trade union have declared strike action in Birmingham amid a pay dispute – bin workers are seen here outside a council depot in the district of Tyseley
Last month the struggling local authority outlined plans to cut £148million from its budget for this year – with an axe being taken to adult and social care and children and families services.
Meanwhile, council tax bills for residents of England’s second city are set to rise by 7.5 per cent from next month.
Pest control experts have warned the build-up of refuse caused by a bin collection strike poses a huge public health danger.
Unite has warned bin disruption in the city could stretch into the summer after refuse workers voted in favour of extending their strike mandate over the council’s use of temporary labour to ‘undermine’ their industrial action.
The council said its contingency plans would normally allow 90 vehicles to operate each day during the strike, but the pickets blocking depots had meant they were deploying much later.
It has meant the council has been making ‘far below’ the 360,000 collections it had hoped to make each week while the strike drags on – while the authority said it would usually carry out ‘well over 500,000 collections per week’.
The council said its daily rate of accumulation of uncollected waste in the city has risen from 483 tonnes per day in the week of March 10, to 655 tonnes per day in the following seven days and almost 900 tonnes per day last week.
Rubbish has remained piled up on Shakespeare Street in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham
Fed-up residents have told of seeing ‘rats as big as cats’ feeding on discarded food
Birmingham’s decision to now declare a major incident comes after the Tories demanded action from communities secretary Angela Rayner over the deepening industrial dispute.
Shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake called on ministers to hold a high-level Cobra meeting to respond to the dispute.
Communities minister Jim McMahon this afternoon said the Government supported the decision by Birmingham City Council to declare a major incident.
He told the House of Commons: ‘The current industrial action in the city is causing misery and disruption to local people, and I know that MPs whose constituencies are affected will be acutely aware of the disruption.
‘From the outset I want to be clear that the statutory intervention is led by commissioners and ministers cannot legally intervene in this industrial action.
‘However, I have been in regular contact with the leadership of the council throughout as they have sought to find a resolution which means the reforms needed to build a sustainable council and which returns a waste collection service to being normally functioning in the way MPs would expect.
‘This is causing a public health risk to the city’s most vulnerable and deprived residents.
‘As a result, I’m aware that Birmingham has today declared a major incident to give them the mechanisms to better manage the impact on local residents and I support that decision, and I will back local leaders to bring this situation under control in the weeks to come.’
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick shared on X, formerly Twitter, a photo illustrating what he highlighted as a divide between local authorities in the West Midlands
People have been using a mobile refuse collection service in Drews Lane Ward End in Birmingham at times during the ongoing industrial action by Unite trade union members
Pest control experts have warned the build-up of refuse caused by a bin collection strike poses a huge public health danger
He also said the Government ‘stands ready’ to respond to any request for extra resources from Birmingham.
Mr Hollinrake responded in the Commons by saying: ‘It is shameful, a national embarrassment, that one of our nation’s great cities, our second city, finds itself in such a bleak situation.
‘As the minister admits in his statement, this is a problem of the council’s own making. It came as a result of the flawed deal with Unite back in 2017 which led to the legal action over equal pay.
‘It is the people who pay the price – mountains of rubbish blighting the streets of Birmingham for more than 20 days and no end in sight to a dispute with, of course, their union paymasters Unite.
‘Almost every area is plagued by overflowing bins, rats the size of cats and opportunistic flytippers exploiting the chaos to turn open spaces into dumping grounds. This, the reality of Labour in local government.’
Meanwhile, Preet Kaur Gill, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said she had heard from a resident who claimed they had been bitten by a rat.
Ms Gill said: ‘The Birmingham bin strike has meant many of my constituents haven’t had their bins collected in weeks, and this week my constituent wrote to me to say they had been bitten by a rat.’
She said she had called for Birmingham City Council to take emergency measures and welcomed its leaders declaring a major incident.
She added: ‘Does the minister agree with me that it is unacceptable that Unite pickets have been frustrating the council’s contingency plans by blocking their depots, and it is time for Unite to accept the fair deal on the table, because 17 people cannot hold 1.2 million Birmingham residents to ransom.’
Communities Secretary Jim McMahon said: ‘(She) is right to say that the vast majority of the workforce have agreed, through one route or another, a way forward on this, whether it’s about voluntary redundancy or accepting a new way of working. It is now down to a smaller number of people who haven’t accepted that, where the dispute in the end lies.
‘It can’t be that a city is almost ground to a halt in terms of waste collection in that circumstance.’
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘Birmingham Council could easily resolve this dispute but instead it seems hellbent on imposing its plan of demotions and pay cuts at all costs.
‘If that involves spending far more than it would cost to resolve the strike fairly, they don’t seem to care.
‘We can only conclude that this massive pay cut for hundreds of refuse workers is only the start and this is really about stamping out any future opposition to its plans to unleash austerity 2.0 on Birmingham.
‘I urge Birmingham Council to rethink this disastrous strategy and to find a way forward that doesn’t involve workers and communities having to pay for politicians’ mistakes.
‘Unite will never accept attacks on our members and we will continue to defend Birmingham’s refuse workforce to the hilt.’