{"id":341078,"date":"2025-12-29T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T14:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/341078\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T14:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T14:24:10","slug":"what-happened-next-maggots-rats-and-growing-despair-a-year-of-the-birmingham-bin-strike-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/341078\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened next: Maggots, rats and growing despair \u2013 a year of the Birmingham bin strike | Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s an icy cold winter morning, and 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir is armed with a broom, tackling the large pile of rubbish that has accumulated outside his terraced house in Small Heath, Birmingham<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This has become an almost daily activity for Bashir since the city\u2019s bin strike started 50 weeks ago and, like many in the city, he is starting to lose patience.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the condition we\u2019re living in. I\u2019ve lived here for 64 years, I came to this country at 16 \u2013 I\u2019ve never seen it this bad. I\u2019m sick,\u201d he says. \u201cI try my best. At the end of the day, I just want my area clean. That\u2019s all I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piles of bin bags, broken glass and furniture have been dumped on the street outside his home and the mosque next door. Across the road, scorched pavement shows where a pile of rubbish was recently set on fire.<\/p>\n

Bashir follows the council\u2019s advice and tries to take much of his rubbish to the local tip, but residents have to book a slot online, and Bashir cannot read or write in English. \u201cI want to do it but it\u2019s hard for old people like myself. We need help. The city needs help. It\u2019s gone on too long,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The bin strike in Birmingham hit headlines in March when the council declared a major incident due to 17,000 tonnes of rubbish<\/a> that had built up on the streets and was attracting vermin.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve never seen it this bad. I\u2019m sick\u2019 \u2026 Mohammed Bashir. Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Although the city council had used agency workers to cover the striking bin staff, people on the picket line were staging \u201cgo slow\u201d protests that were preventing bin lorries from leaving the depot, causing the buildup of waste.<\/p>\n

After the council secured a court injunction in May to stop this from happening, a degree of normality returned and national attention swiftly moved on \u2013 people outside the city thought the strike had long since finished.<\/p>\n

But the people of Birmingham, which is home to more than one million, are still waiting for their normal bin collections to resume. With the workforce still striking, the council is relying on a smaller agency workforce which means collections are sporadic in some areas and there have been no recycling bin collections anywhere in the city since early January.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a health and safety hazard, and there\u2019s a very bad smell. We still pay our council tax yet we do our bins like this<\/p>\n

A December strike by the agency bin workers threatens to make things worse. Meanwhile, people have started to cram all their rubbish, including cardboard boxes, cans and bottles, into one general waste bin and they\u2019re often overflowing by the time bin collection day comes round.<\/p>\n

The effect has been felt most in the more deprived areas of the city where there is higher-density living such as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and large families squeezed into small homes \u2013 there are eight people, including Bashir\u2019s children and grandchildren, living in his house. \u201cHow is one bin enough?\u201d he says. \u201cI can guarantee you that you can go into every house on this street and it is overcrowded with people. There are more than six people, seven people, eight people. One bin is not enough, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The result has been an increase in dumped bin bags and fly-tipping as people desperately try to get rid of their waste. Noor Ahmed, 57, said the bus stop outside her home has become a magnet for dumped rubbish, which she is forced to tackle while caring for her husband, who has cancer. \u201cIt\u2019s a health and safety hazard, and there\u2019s a very bad smell. I\u2019ve had rats in my garden, even in my kitchen,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have to go to the tip, but sometimes there are big queues. We started to organise groups to help older people who can\u2019t take their own rubbish, we take it for them. We still pay our council tax and yet we do our bins like this. It\u2019s exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re committed to see it through to the end\u2019: bin lorry driver and Unite convener, Matt Reid, outside Birmingham city council\u2019s depot in Tyseley. Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Robert Charlton, who runs his own pest control business in Birmingham, says it had been his busiest year since he first started working in the industry 11 years ago, and he has been gearing up for a hectic Christmas period. \u201cIt\u2019s starting to pick up again because rodents are looking for food and shelter, so I\u2019m getting more phone calls,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve hardly had any days off, to be honest. At the peak, I was working from 8am to 8pm every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says most of his callouts were for mice and rats, as well as dead foxes who had been snooping around the piled-up bin bags, and he had to deal with some very distressed families. \u201cLast month I was called to a house and we caught 23 rodents. It was crazy \u2013 the worst I have seen in my career,\u201d he says. Have the rats actually been as big as cats, as has been much quoted in the press since the start of the strike? \u201cI would say kittens, yeah, I do believe that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest impacts of the bin strike is the environmental toll. With recycling collections across the city paused for almost a year, more and more rubbish is heading into general waste, much of which ends up in an incinerator in the east of the city. Birmingham\u2019s recycling rate has plummeted to 14%, substantially below the council\u2019s target of 35% and the 44% average for England \u2013 of 90,667 tonnes of rubbish collected between July and September in Birmingham, just 12,471 tonnes was recycled.<\/p>\n

Waste and uncollected rubbish in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham. Photograph: Fabio De Paola\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the biggest local authority in the country in population terms, so anything that happens in Birmingham affects 1.2 million people. And there is still no recycling collection,\u201d says John Newson, from Birmingham Friends of the Earth. \u201cMany people outside Birmingham, and even people inside Birmingham, can\u2019t really believe that\u2019s true and somehow think it\u2019s over. But it is true, and that is a lot of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says there\u2019s growing concern that people\u2019s recycling habits could be permanently disrupted. \u201cIt\u2019s not about blaming people \u2013 nobody in Birmingham asked for this to happen or has any real control over it,\u201d says Newson. \u201cThere is a lot of confusion in people\u2019s minds now, and the trust that was built up has gone \u2013 what do you want us to do with our rubbish, and what are you going to do with it? It has all gone backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shafaq Hussain, a community leader and youth worker in Small Heath, says it would be particularly hard to reintroduce recycling in his area, where issues have persisted for some time. \u201cIt took a long time for us to do a lot of educating in the community about recycling, about the distinction between the two bins \u2013 but it has been almost a year now without that. So the environmental impact is very messy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He has been leading community calls to end the strike, or to force central government to intervene and bring the striking workers and council back around the table, saying that the voice of residents had been lost over the course of the year. \u201cPeople are just fed up \u2013 we\u2019ve had maggots, we\u2019ve had rats,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are about 190 takeaways in a radius of about a half-mile here, which creates more bulk waste and we\u2019re substantially overcrowded \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of people in each household. We\u2019re the ones left dealing with it but there\u2019s no transparency \u2013 we have no idea what has gone on in those negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basmin Khan \u2026 \u2018I don\u2019t think the council know how to control it any more.\u2019 Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

On the picket line outside the bin lorry depot in Tyseley, the striking bin workers, have said they are more resolved than ever \u2013 having voted to continue their strike mandate to May 2026, when Labour will be vying to keep control of the council in local elections. They want to guarantee pay protection for the rest of the bin workers and the council to reverse its decision to scrap the waste and recycling collection officer role.<\/p>\n

Scrapping the role would not only cut costs but the council also argues that the position is an equal-pay liability risk, with no equivalent paying role in the female-dominated workforce such as cleaning staff and school-meal supervisors. The council has lost millions of pounds in equal-pay claims in recent years \u2013 it is one of the main reasons it went \u201cbankrupt\u201d<\/a>. However, the unions say they have consulted lawyers who say the role is not an equal-pay liability risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re committed to see it through to the end,\u201d says Matthew Reid, a bin lorry driver and Unite<\/a> convener. \u201cWe can\u2019t go through 11 months of what we\u2019ve been through, and put the city through, to get no results at the end of it.\u201d The striking workers are receiving \u00a370 a day from the Unite strike fund, which is a significant pay cut, although Reid says this is what they would be paid under the council\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a feeling here of determination, people are willing to take that hit because they can\u2019t accept an \u00a38,000 [annual pay] loss,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it has been a rollercoaster. We\u2019ve never been on strike for this long before, and there\u2019s financial strain \u2013 people not being able to afford mortgages and rent, family strain. We just have to stand with one other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noor Ahmed \u2026 \u2018I\u2019ve had rats in my garden, even in my kitchen.\u2019 Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Some of Basmin Khan\u2019s videos, showing the huge piles of rubbish dumped on her street in Small Heath, have gone viral on social media \u2013 a mound of mattresses, broken furniture, cardboard boxes and plastic bottles sits at the end of her road, right next to a school playground.<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old says the strike has \u201cemboldened\u201d fly-tippers, and vans have appeared in the middle of the night to drop off rubbish, with little consequence. Some of her neighbours say they have paid money to have their rubbish taken away, only to find it dumped on a street corner less than a mile away. \u201cI don\u2019t think the council know how to control it any more,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t blame the council completely and I\u2019m not going to, but we are stuck because we just want them to see what we\u2019re experiencing and give us something to help tackle the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her videos have attracted a toxic rhetoric directed at deprived areas with large BAME populations, she says. \u201cImport the third world, and you get the third world\u201d is one of many comments that frequently appear under her clips.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there is a problem, absolutely. But we also know we are under-resourced, there\u2019s a huge lack of investment,\u201d she says. \u201cIt gives us a really bad reputation to say we\u2019re all like this \u2013 to suggest we all want to live in a dirty place. We don\u2019t. That\u2019s not how we want to live at all. It was never like this when I moved here.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has launched a petition to get the council to install more security cameras to clamp down on fly-tipping, and push to end the strike that has dragged on for so long. \u201cNobody should ever think this is normal,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are the UK\u2019s second city. It\u2019s a disgrace. Everyone says we\u2019re bankrupt or we\u2019re poor. For goodness sake, the UK is in the G7. We should have enough money to be able to keep our streets clean.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s an icy cold winter morning, and 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir is armed with a broom, tackling the large…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-341078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}