Birmingham's bin chaos: rubbish piles up, rats run riot and the public pays the price

15 April 2025, 07:51

Labour-run Birmingham City Council are in the midst of their third bin strike in the last 8 years. The impact of this Labour dispute has been devastating on the city.

Brummies and visitors face rubbish at every turn. 21,000 tonnes of uncollected rubbish by the Council’s own metric.

In the first three months, Labour have suspended recycling collections, taken payments from residents for the garden waste collection service only to scrap that service, and halted bulky waste collections.

Currently the Council is simply trying to collect the residual waste.

To understand how the Labour Council found itself in this mess, one has to look at the cause and settlement to their first bin dispute in 2017. To settle that strike the Council gave up scrapping the ‘leading hands’ role and instead renamed them ‘WRCO officers’ as part of a deal, with additional duties bolted on that it has been alleged resulted in grade inflation.

The local paper has highlighted that these roles are the cause of Labour’s Equal Pay crisis that helped effectively bankrupt the Council.

In reality the Labour Council’s political leadership had been warned about the risk of equal pay by auditors, officers, trade unions and the opposition. And the Labour Leadership chose to ignore those warnings.

Wherever you turn, print media, social media, tv or radio, the City of Birmingham’s reputation is being dragged through the mud and doing untold damage to the economy and local jobs longer term. Residents are being subjected to living amongst rubbish and rats that are out of control. Birmingham deserves so much better than the current Labour administration which has run out of ideas and run out of credibility.

That's why we published our plan, as the opposition, for ending Labour's bin strike.

Birmingham Local Conservatives’ plan to end the bin strike:

• Protect all staff trying to do their job and ensure refuse trucks get out the depots
• Ensure all potential Equal Pay risks are removed and do not allow settlements that create new ones.
• Place deadlines on any offers to settle the bin dispute, to prevent taxpayers being held to ransom.
• Urgently complete the previously committed review of the service’s future operating model, as promised after previous strikes.
• Investigate using staff on flexible contracts and other councils to clear the rubbish and rats off the streets.
• Implement in full the Local Conservatives’ fully costed ‘Plan for a Cleaner City’; including maintaining weekly collections, scrapping the ‘Rat Tax’ and increasing street cleaning, as proposed at the March budget meeting.Sadly at the recent Full Council Meeting the Labour Group voted against a debate and vote on our motion to declare a public health emergency and plan to end the strike.

The biggest issue in the city, and Labour Councillors voted to block any debate and vote on the issue.

Now with the rejection of the latest deal we urge Labour to reconsider their earlier opposition and back this plan to end the strike and get the rubbish and the rats off the streets.

Cllr Robert Alden is Leader of the Conservative Group on Birmingham City Council.

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