Birmingham City Council urged to scrap 'rat tax' as bin strikes grip city

It was nearly a year ago the crisis-hit authority’s budget was passed, with cuts and ‘reviews’ impacting bin collections, youth services, libraries, cultural grants and more.

Another change were the Labour council’s plans to introduce new pest control charges for ‘rat in garden and rat in house treatments’, a service which was previously free.

The move proved divisive, with one Conservative councillor warning of a “golden decade for rats” during a heated debate in the grand council chamber.

Now almost 12 months on, there have been further calls to reject the charge as bin strikes continue to grip the city.

Conservative councillor Adam Higgs (Highters Heath) has described it as a ‘rat tax’ and put forward an amendment to a recent review of pest control charges, which proposed raising the charge from £24 to £26.40.

“As this committee is aware, this service [pest control for rats] was free until last year,” he told a licensing and public protection committee this month.

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“This committee also proposed an amendment, or it was passed, that the service should be free. I think we should do the same again this year.”

He continued: “I believe that the service should be free – we are currently in the midst of a bin strike where residents, through no fault of their own, are not having their waste collected. This is obviously going to have an impact on an increase in rats so I would like to propose that we remove the charge for pest control for rats.”

Sam Forsyth (Quinton), chair of the committee, said she opposed the introduction of the rat charges last year.

“My position has not changed,” she told the committee this month. “For what I hope are obvious reasons, nobody wishes to see this city overrun with rats. Rats carry disease and they frighten people. My objection is still there and I would support the amendment as a matter of principle.”

Carmel Corrigan (Kings Norton North) echoed similar worries, saying: “The current situation with waste adds an additional dimension to the potential issues that we have with rats.”

Sajeela Naseer, director of regulation and enforcement at the council, told the meeting that the charge was brought in because the delivery of the free service was costing the authority around £400,000.

“Obviously we’re in a specific financial situation at the moment,” she said. “We followed a lead that has been shown by other local authorities across the country.”

She continued the charge was reflective of the cost that Brummies can purchase rat poison for.

“We have been monitoring the impact of the increase in charges and there has been a drop-off of use of services,” she went on to acknowledge. “But we have not seen an increase in complaints to our environmental health section with relation to rats. We believe that people are treating themselves and purchasing poison from online suppliers and hardware stores.”

She went on to say that the council is currently consulting on a new operating structure within pest control

“Whereas last year the pest control service was costing the council £400,000, it will now be of no cost to the council,” she said. “We accept there are citizens who will no longer have that free service but we have done our best to mitigate against the impacts.”

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As it stands, treatments for rats in the house and garden are free for council tenants.

The committee ultimately voted in favour of the amendment to reject the charge.

Green Party councillor Julien Pritchard (Druids Heath and Monyhull) said he would be supporting the amendment but warned that full council overturned a similar one last year.

“My plea would be to those members who vote for it here to also follow through on that and vote for it at council as well,” he said.

The council passed through its unprecedented budget last year as it faced a perfect storm of issues including Birmingham-specific factors, such as an equal pay fiasco and the disastrous implementation of a new IT and finance system, as well as the rising demand for services and funding cuts.