Future leaders of Birmingham council must address bin strike woes
Local Democracy Reporter Alexander Brock says the future leaders of Birmingham City Council must resolve waste woes.
For some time, much of the conversation around Birmingham City Council has been dominated by an unglamorous topic: bins.
The bins strike was a major talking point in the build-up to last month’s local elections, with Brummies exasperated with rubbish heaps in their communities and unwanted headlines about their city.
The waste collection situation remains frustrating for many residents, with the industrial action dragging on and the city still not having recycling collections after they were suspended February last year due to the strike.
And there’s now further uncertainty after the council said this week that plans to transform the waste service would be put ‘on pause’ as it awaits new political leadership.
Simply put, urgent action is needed on Brum’s bins from whoever takes charge in the coming days.
Even before the strike got under way in January 2025, bin collections in the Second City were described as patchy at times.
In the build-up to May’s elections, former council leader John Cotton acknowledged that the “waste service in this city hasn’t been good enough for a very long time”.
That’s why the city council was planning to transform the waste service – an endeavour that would improve reliability and finally “provide a service our residents need and deserve”.
This was a project which would have involved moving to fortnightly collections of household rubbish, as well as the introduction of a second recycling bin and weekly food waste collections.
The rollout of these major changes was delayed last year however due to the bins strike and pushed back to June 2026, with the council previously saying they would go ahead this month regardless of the strike situation.
However, the council revealed on Monday that the transformation of the waste service, which was to include the return of recycling collections, has been put on hold.
“The planned changes to the waste collection service will not progress whilst we await the new political administration of the council,” a council spokesperson said. “We are sorry for any confusion this causes.
“We are keeping the existing service and will provide a further update once we have a position from the new administration.”
Recent events mean Brummies are now in a situation where:
- The bins strike remains ongoing (though an ‘agreement’ had been reached before the elections).
- Recycling remains suspended.
- The transformation of the waste service, which planned to improve reliability, has been put on pause.
It’s easy to see why people are massively fed up – to ask residents in a huge city like Birmingham to go 16 months without recycling collections is abysmal.
And on top of that, uncertainty still lingers over the strike and the future of bin collections at a time where areas continue to be blighted by rubbish.
The fury across the city has been palpable this year.
“There’s rats – they’re bigger than the cats,” Selly Oak resident Catherine Zinetti told me back in March, on the one year anniversary of the all-out strike.
“Why should we have to pay petrol money to take the rubbish to the tip when we’re paying our council tax?
“We’re suffering. You walk down and it stinks, I’m embarrassed to live around here.”
Elsewhere in Lozells, shortly before the elections, resident Jane Majid described living near a rubbish pile as “diabolical” and said she had also seen “rats as big as cats”.
She told me that issues with waste had plagued her road for around 20 years and got worse due to the impact of bins strike.
“This has been going on for years and years and years,” she said “It’s always been like this.
“It’s not nice living here – it’s embarrassing when you have got relatives coming round.”
The previous Labour administration at the council argued that a fair offer had been made to striking workers, despite claims that they face a pay cut of £8,000 due to the loss of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) role.
But with Labour losing control of the council last month, attention now turns to whoever ends up leading the authority in the coming years.
The local elections saw the fracturing of Birmingham’s politics, which means no party had even half the numbers needed to take control of the council themselves.
Talks have been underway to try and form a stable coalition between various groups and a meeting has reportedly been scheduled for Friday to decide the next leader and administration.
Whoever ends up taking charge needs to make addressing the uncertainty over waste collection in the city an immediate priority and provide clarity over the bins strike ‘agreement’ and basic services such as recycling.
Residents across the city want to see the strike finally resolved and to feel pride in their neighbourhoods, as well as reliable collections and the return of recycling.
At an election hustings event, it was reassuring to see that all party leaders and individual candidates agree that resolving the bins strike should be a major priority for any future leadership at the council.
It’s time to translate those promises into action – the city has had enough national headlines about bins and ‘cat-sized rats’.