Robert Alden, Conservative, and Reform’s Jex Parkin – despite his party’s previous statement – were also nominated for leader, but Harmer was voted in with 40 votes amid a number of abstentions.<\/p>\n
Labour, which previously ran the council, had also ruled itself out of forming any coalition. The party has 17 councillors in Birmingham – one more than the Conservatives and two fewer than the Greens, the city’s second largest block behind Reform.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Labour held 65 seats.<\/p>\n
More recently, the group had been locked in a row with members of the Unite union over pay and the loss of some job roles, with all-out, continuing strike action beginning in March 2025.<\/p>\n
The city brought in agency staff to maintain waste collections, although recycling collections are still not being carried out.<\/p>\n
Days from the local elections of 7 May, the then council leader, Labour’s John Cotton, said a settlement was “within sight” to resolve the dispute.<\/p>\n
Unite officials said any new agreement would have to be put to members but that what was floated by Cotton included compensation of up to \u00a316,000 for workers.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the council declared itself effectively bankrupt due to a financial black hole linked to equal pay liabilities and the botched installation of a multi-million-pound IT system.<\/p>\n
Government commissioners were brought in to oversee the council’s finances and their work continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Alden, Conservative, and Reform’s Jex Parkin – despite his party’s previous statement – were also nominated for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-623305","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\/623305","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=623305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}