Government must get to grips with rubbish collection in Birmingham and stop the damaging industrial action

Waste Collections and Waste services are at the heart of what all Local Authorities do and underpin an essential part of the daily service they provide to their taxpayers.

However, what we have seen over the last 12-months in Birmingham which has impacted further on the wider West Midlands area including my own in Walsall is a breakdown in waste collection services because of the year-long industrial action in the Labour run City.

Industrial action which left rubbish piled high in the streets, fly tipping across the City and in neighbouring Boroughs, rats or as they have become known the ‘Squeaky Blinders’ running rampant through the streets, the army being called in to manage a logistical operation to prevent a public health disaster and a region being reported right across the globe for all the wrong reasons.

The ongoing saga that is the Birmingham bin strike has now entered its second year.

The whole strike is causing massive reputational damage to the United Kingdom’s second city and to the wider West Midlands region.

Indeed, the battering that the city has taken stretches across the globe with news outlets such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featuring the story under the headline ‘Rats on the loose’ and international press openly debating the ‘Mayhem in the Midlands’.

The sheer cost to the taxpayer as well is eye watering.

Between January and August last year the Council spent £8.4 million on agency staff and a further £5 million on outsourced contractors. Totalling a staggering £1.675 million per month. This is three times the monthly spend on waste collection services in 2024 which were costing £533,000 per month and all of this from a Council which is effectively bankrupt.

At the same time, it is estimated the Council have lost £4.4 million in revenue as it was forced to suspend garden waste services to prioritise waste collections. If the strike continues until the end of March, then the one-off costs including additional street cleaning and security as well as lost income are anticipated to rise to £14.6 million.

On the 28thJanuary 2025 Birmingham City Council acknowledged their extremely poor recycling rates. The second lowest of any Unitary Authority in the country at only 22.9% and of course, such was the impact of the strikes across the city one of the first services to be cancelled was recycling services.

I have staff members living under Labour Birmingham City Council who still have wrapping paper from Christmas 2024 in their recycling bins. The net result of cancelling recycling services is that, that poor figure of 22% has plummeted to just 15%.

In all of this there is a consistent lack of political leadership. Where has the Labour Mayor of the West Midlands been in all of this.

On Radio WM as recently as the 18th of December he stated “I don’t employ the workforce” and “I have done all I can”.

Well to be honest Mr Mayor to the outside world that doesn’t appear to have been an awful lot.

The Mayor may not employ the workforce, but the Mayor knows the reputational damage this is doing not just to Birmingham, but also to the wider West Midlands and as the most senior elected politician in the region he should have been far more pro-active and visible in ensuring a resolution was found.

Does anyone believe that had Andy Street still been the Mayor of the West Midlands he wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to ensure that the escalation of this strike was stopped and resolved at the earliest opportunity.

Ministers appointed now as far back as September in the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government in all their responses to me and others in the House do not even appear to have held meetings with the Leaders of Birmingham City Council.

Surely, if the Mayor won’t show any political leadership then Ministers within the Department should show some political leadership?

Because of course where are the Leaders of Labour Birmingham City Council. Cllr John Cotton walked away from negotiations on 9th July. That as of today is 196 days ago – that isn’t political leadership, that is called letting down the communities you serve.

This strike is harming residents, it is harming local communities, it is harming our reputation.

The Government must take heed as waste collections are a fundamental service and when you can’t manage waste collections you can’t manage your Local Authority because you have fundamentally let down your residents at the most basic level.

Now is the time for action on the part of this Government to get to grips with waste management in Birmingham and to ensure that this ongoing industrial action stops impacting residents across the West Midlands.