Birmingham bin strikes could delay move from weekly to fortnightly collections

From April, the city council is planning for neighbourhoods across the city to transition in phases to fortnightly collections of household rubbish.

The authority also wants to bring in a weekly food waste collection and a second recycling bin specifically for recycling paper and cardboard.

The crisis-hit city council’s plans to transform waste collection have been described as a key part of its recovery plan and aim to significantly reduce costs.

But the current ‘all out’ bins strike, triggered by a dispute between members of Unite the union and the council, could lead to a setback.

Craig Cooper, the council’s strategic director of city operations, was asked today whether the move to fortnightly collections could be impacted by the strike.

“The entire service and our ability to move to improvements is being held to ransom by the industrial action,” he said. “It could be delayed.

“Our intention is to hope that it’s not delayed.”

READ MORE: Shocking images show stinking rubbish piled high in Birmingham’s streets

He went on to argue Unite were causing disruption on the behalf of a “very small cohort” of workers.

He also urged the union to “be really clear about what their expectations for this strike are and what they’re aiming to achieve”.

Unite organised the strike amid council’s plans to scrap the waste recycling and collection officer role, which the union described as “safety-critical”.

“We have a lot of support [from residents],” Zoe Mayou, regional officer at Unite, said during a demonstration last week.

“We are not doing this strike to hold the city to ransom.”

She added that many Unite members were taxpayers living in Birmingham and feeling the impacts of the industrial action themselves.

The city council said it had made a “fair and reasonable offer” to Unite and alternatives have been offered to the “small number of workers whose wages are impacted ongoing by the changes to the service”.

“Residents of Birmingham want and deserve a better waste collection service and the restructure that Unite is opposing is part of the much-needed transformation of the service,” a council spokesperson said.

External auditors recently highlighted several issues and missteps which contributed to the council’s financial woes, including the equal pay debacle, inadequate budget setting, poor service management, demand led pressures and the disastrous implementation of a new IT and finance system.

Labour councillors have also highlighted the impact of funding cuts over the past decade or so.