Birmingham City Council declares major incident

The council has a contingency plan using our limited resources to collect from all properties in the city once a week, but actions on the picket line have prevented us from doing this.

The daily blocking of our depots by pickets has meant that we cannot get our vehicles out to collect waste from residents. Often, we can only get one vehicle out per hour.

This has meant that to date around 17,000 tonnes of waste remains uncollected across the city.

This has led to rising concerns of risks to public health and damage to our environment.

The council is already working to an emergency plan; declaring a major incident will initially allow the council to:

• Quickly increase the availability of street cleansing and fly-tip removal with an additional 35 vehicles and crews around the city.
• Work with partners to better manage the risks the city is facing, including health and fire risks and allow for increased data and intelligence sharing. Initially this will be focussed upon support to allow our vehicles to safely exit and enter our depots on time.
• Allow the council to explore what further support is available from neighbouring authorities and government to assist us in managing the situation.

Councillor John Cotton, leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “It’s regrettable that we have had to take this step, but we cannot tolerate a situation that is causing harm and distress to communities across Birmingham.

“I respect the right to strike and protest, however actions on the picket line must be lawful and sadly the behaviour of some now means we are seeing a significant impact on residents and the city’s environment.

“Unless we declare a major incident and deploy the waste service’s contingency plan, then we would be unable to clear the backlog of waste on the streets or improve the frequency of collections.

“I want to thank residents for their continued patience under difficult circumstances and the community groups who have been working hard within their communities to help with clear-up.

“I would reiterate that we have made a fair and reasonable offer to our workers which means none of them have to lose any money and I would urge Unite to reconsider their position.”

The council usually deploys around 200 vehicles over 8-hour daily shifts. Our contingency allows 90 vehicles per day but because of pickets blocking depots they are deployed much later and therefore for shorter working periods.

Normally we would make well over 500,000 collections per week. Our strike contingency would mean 360,000 but due to the blockade of depots we are doing far below this.

• Our waste collection rate against our reduced service plan (one single collection per property / week) has declined from 87% in the week of 10th March, to 64% in the week of 17th March, to 17% in the week of 24th March.
• The daily rate of accumulation of uncollected waste in the city has increased from 483 tonnes per day in the week of 10th March, to 655 tonnes per day in the week of 17th March, to almost 900 tonnes per day in the week of 24th March.
• We estimate there are now over 17,000 tons of uncollected rubbish in the city.