logo
Multi-million pound taxpayer cost of Birmingham bin strike revealed in report

Multi-million pound taxpayer cost of Birmingham bin strike revealed in report

ITV News2 days ago
The ongoing bin strike in Birmingham is estimated to have cost the city council almost £4 million.
The industrial action, which has been causing disruption since January this year, has left residents having to endure missed collections and heaps of rubbish in the street.
But it's also inflicted financial pain on the local authority, which effectively declared itself bankrupt in September 2023.
In a recent finance report, Birmingham City Council said it incurred a 'significant level' of one-off response and clear-up costs during April and May because of the strike.
They included street cleansing, extended opening hours of Mobile Household Waste and Recycling Centres, security costs and additional support to tackle the accumulation of waste.
The report also stated that, as the strike continues, additional costs were building up for:
A proportion of the costs were mitigated by the reduction in staff costs, with striking bin workers instead being financially supported by the Unite union.
However, up to the end of May, the factors were still estimated to have cost the council around £3.9 million according to the report.
'It is not possible to determine how long the strike action will continue, thus a forecast for the future cost impact of the strike has not been incorporated,' it said.
It added that the city council would not be providing a green waste service in 2025/26, which had been budgeted to achieve £4.4 million.
'Income from bulky waste and commercial waste are also anticipated to underachieve,' it said.
'However, the income received from the energy contract relating to the incineration of waste will over-perform and offset this as was seen in 2024/25.'
The report also focused on the transformation of the council's waste services, which was pushed back because of the industrial action earlier this year.
The project has been described as a key part of the crisis-hit council's recovery plan and will see collections move from weekly to fortnightly.
Weekly food waste collections and a second recycling bin specifically for recycling paper and cardboard were also set to be introduced in phases across the city from April onwards.
But the report said: 'The council has had to delay the delivery of several savings and the implementation of transformation plans. It is anticipated that as street scene transformation is rolled out, a proportion of these savings will be achieved but this will be subject to the timing and speed of rollout.
'Some, but not all, of the projected savings shortfall is therefore associated with the impact of the industrial action.'
The council said a number of projects across its 'city operations' directorate faced the risk of slippage.
In total, the cost of the 'non-delivery' of savings after mitigation, amid transformation plans being delayed, was forecast at £10.1 million, according to the council.
Tensions over the strike have dragged on into the summer, with Unite voting to suspend the membership of Labour councillors at the city council, including leader Coun John Cotton and also deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
The council said it was ending negotiations with Unite to resolve the dispute, which was initially triggered by the loss of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) role.
Striking workers have raised concerns about pay while the Labour-run council's leadership has repeatedly insisted a 'fair and reasonable' offer had been made.
Birmingham City Council said last week it would notify staff and unions of its intention to enter consultation with affected workers – while keeping the door open to those wanting to accept offers to retrain or be redeployed.
Council leader John Cotton said at the time: 'We have negotiated in good faith but, unfortunately, Unite has rejected all offers so we must now press ahead to both address our equal pay risk and make much needed improvements to the waste service.
'This is a service that has not been good enough for a long time and we must improve it.
'Unite's demands would leave us with another equal pay bill of hundreds of millions of pounds, which is totally unacceptable, and would jeopardise the considerable progress we have made in our financial recovery.'
Councillor Majid Mahmood, Cabinet Member for Environment, said last week that the council remained committed to creating a 'modern, sustainable and consistently reliable waste collection service for all residents'.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Car stocks surge as Trump agrees trade deal with Japan
Car stocks surge as Trump agrees trade deal with Japan

Telegraph

time27 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

Car stocks surge as Trump agrees trade deal with Japan

7:04AM Good morning Thanks for joining me. Shares of car makers have surged higher after Donald Trump announced the US has agreed a trade deal with Japan. Here is what you need to know. 5 things to start your day Donald Trump announces 'massive' trade deal with Japan | Tokyo will invest $550 billion in the US in exchange for lower tariffs Labour's great rail revival has already hit the buffers | The decision to relaunch just one defunct train line has sparked anger and frustration across Britain Laws to allow UAE stake in The Telegraph approved by Lords | Peers vote to let foreign states take passive shareholdings in British newspapers of up to 15pc Mike Lynch's estate faces bankruptcy over £700m fraud ruling | Judge orders late tech tycoon's estate to compensate HP over 2011 sale of his software company Nuclear fusion start-up claims to have cracked alchemy | Silicon Valley company says discovery marks 'beginning of a new golden age' What happened overnight Japanese shares surged to a one-year high as the country struck a trade deal with the United States that lowers tariffs on its cars. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a trade deal with Tokyo will include Japan paying a lower-than-threatened 15pc tariff on shipments to the US. It followed an agreement with the Philippines that will see the US collect a 19pc tariff rate on imports from there. Mr Trump also said representatives from the European Union were coming for trade negotiations on Wednesday. That stirred hopes for a deal with Europe, even as the EU was reportedly refining countermeasures in case of a deadlock before the August 1 deadline. Japan's Nikkei bolted 3.9pc higher as shares of carmakers surged on news the deal would cut the US car tariff to 15pc, from a proposed 25pc. Mazda Motor rallied 17pc, while Toyota Motor jumped 13.6pc. South Korean carmakers also rallied as the Japan deal fuelled optimism over potential progress in tariff negotiations between South Korea and the United States. Wall Street inched to another record on Tuesday following some mixed profit reports, as General Motors and other big US companies gave updates on how much Mr Trump's tariffs are hurting or helping them. The S&P 500 added 0.1pc to the all-time high it had set the day before, closing at 6,309.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4pc to 44,502.44. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.4pc from its own record, to 20,892.68.

GMB chief Gary Smith: 'Oil and gas is not the enemy'
GMB chief Gary Smith: 'Oil and gas is not the enemy'

New Statesman​

timean hour ago

  • New Statesman​

GMB chief Gary Smith: 'Oil and gas is not the enemy'

Illustration by Ellie Foreman Peck Gary Smith is not a man who disguises his passions. The wall of his office features framed pictures of pioneering Scottish trade unionists, the Durham Miners' Gala, steam ferries on the Mersey, the jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, and Hibernian FC. As the general secretary of the GMB – the country's third-largest trade union, with around 630,000 members – the blunt, puckish Scotsman leads an organisation that is more central to national life today than it has been for decades. Its parliamentary group alone comprises more than 250 Labour MPs (making it, as Smith likes to quip, over twice the size of the Conservative Party), including Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner. GMB's presence in sectors such as defence, energy and manufacturing means that cabinet ministers heed its voice. 'It's a huge improvement on what went before, impossible to compare it,' said Smith, 57, with a thatch of boyish blond hair. We met in Euston, central London, at the GMB's national office, Mary Turner House (named after the indomitable Irishwoman who served as the union's president for 20 years). Smith praised the government's rescue of British Steel, its defence industrial strategy, the commitment to build the Sizewell C nuclear plant and the 'transformative' Employment Rights Bill. 'Has the government made mistakes?' Smith asked. 'Yeah, absolutely, and we have been outspoken in our criticism about winter fuel payments. Nobody said there shouldn't have been reform of payments; it was just badly handled. Likewise, on disability benefits, we were very worried about the poorest and most vulnerable – many of our people who are in work get Pip payments.' Smith, who was elected general secretary four years ago, has often been an ally to Starmer when it's mattered most. At the 2021 Labour Party Conference it was post-midnight conversations with Smith in Brighton hotel suites that convinced Starmer and his chief aide, Morgan McSweeney, that they had the votes required to rewrite the party rule book and marginalise the Corbynite left. But Smith is unsparing in his criticism of Labour's first year in office. 'The big thing that is missing is a clear vision about the future. What we need is a sense of national mission and I don't think that's there. I don't think we've got that emotionally compelling story about the future of the country. 'We are emerging into a new world order as well. That's very difficult for any government to navigate. This is a new epoch that's opened up in front of us: the end of globalisation, the end of neoliberalism. Any government's got to wrestle with what Britain's place in the world is going to be.' He added: 'It frustrates me that the right-wing press accuse[s] Labour of talking down Britain. I think in many ways people are underestimating the state the country's in. Our finances are precarious, we've seen that in the past few weeks. We are beholden to the bond markets; this could unravel very quickly. The country's in a really difficult situation and so I don't envy what they've had to inherit.' (The Office for Budget Responsibility's recent report warned that the UK had the sixth-highest debt, fifth-highest deficit and third-highest borrowing costs of the 38 OECD countries.) This year Donald Trump has become the unlikely hero of some US unions, with the United Auto Workers praising his tariffs as necessary to 'end the free-trade disaster'. Smith invoked the US New Right – and its embrace of protectionism over Reaganism – several times during our conversation. 'The New Right saw an opportunity with working-class communities hollowed out by globalisation. We can talk about average GDP, we can talk about how many people in the globe got wealthy. There were a whole number of our communities that were absolutely abandoned. 'People were told that they're competing in this global labour market and the jobs went abroad and that left people embittered, angry and absolutely disoriented. And the New Right in America got this – they certainly got it better than the liberal left did.' To some this will sound reminiscent of Blue Labour, the party's economically interventionist and socially conservative faction. (Its founder, Maurice Glasman, was the sole Labour parliamentarian invited to Trump's inauguration.) But Smith bridled at the comparison. 'I'm not being critical of anybody but we're not Blue Labour. Why do we have to stick badges on things all the time? We're a working-class organisation; we spend a lot of time listening to our members. So I'm not interested in fashionable factions in the Labour Party, I'm just interested in listening to working-class people, and our members have been telling us this for a long time. They are tired of low-paid, insecure employment. That was a Tory economic model. 'You know, we got to a point in Barrow where we couldn't build nuclear submarines. The only growth industry was heroin, and that happened under Cameron and Osborne. So what shapes our world-view is not some factional philosophy in Labour – it's just listening to working-class people and our membership.' Unite, the UK's second-largest union, this month vowed to 're-examine' its affiliation to Labour and excoriated the party's record in office, with union representatives since surveyed on the matter. 'It's up to Unite what they do. We're not interested in what other unions do,' Smith replied diplomatically when I raised the subject. 'For us, a relationship with government should be contentious, there should be disagreement and debate. But I'd much rather have a Labour government in power than the alternative. And let's be clear about the Tories – they're done – the alternative is going to be Reform.' What does Smith believe is fuelling Farage's ascendancy? 'This is a fuck-you vote, people are just angry: they're pissed off and they're looking for somebody to kick. A lot of this ultimately is about declining living standards. We're a country where in our towns and communities people just look beat. You live in a city like London and even if you're on a good wage you're struggling to keep your head above water… Farage is feeding off that anger and frustration and decline.' In recent months, Farage has reframed Reform as 'the party of working people', speaking of his desire for a 'sensible relationship' with the trade unions and vowing to reopen the Port Talbot steelworks. But Smith – precisely the kind of earthy general secretary whose endorsement Farage would relish – is unimpressed. 'I think he's a chancer. He is no friend of trade unions or working-class people. Peel back the rhetoric: where was he on the Employment Rights Bill? He's voted against working people at Amazon having the right to organise and collectively bargain over their pay. He's voted against people having stronger collective rights at work, which will allow us to better redistribute wealth in this country.' Smith ridiculed Farage's claim that he was appalled by Michael Heseltine's closure of coal mines as Conservative trade and industry secretary in the 1990s. 'Do you think he went on picket lines and supported the miners? Do you think he argued for the steel workers? No, he was a metal trader in the City of London, lifting another glass of Champagne as all this devastation of UK industry and communities went on.' Gary Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1967; his father was an electrician and his mother a bookmaker's clerk. He became a Scottish Gas apprentice at the age of 16 (the GMB later paid for him to study at Ruskin College, and he gained a Master's degree in industrial relations from Warwick University). His political consciousness was shaped by the fraught social conflicts of the early Thatcher era. 'I saw working-class people and communities getting treated very badly,' he said. 'I get so angry when I listen to people talk fondly about the Thatcher era because a lot of kids didn't get off the housing estates. It was mass unemployment, cheap heroin, and HIV/Aids. There's a whole generation of young men who died and never made it through that period.' Four decades on, Smith is once more haunted by the spectre of deindustrialisation. He spoke of a recent encounter with an oil and gas worker moved to tears in Middlesbrough ('big guy, really impressive guy') who declared at a town hall meeting: 'They're doing to us what they did to Middlesbrough in the 1980s.' For this, Smith attributes much blame to the UK's net zero policy of which he is the fiercest Labour critic. 'For too long, we were exporting jobs and importing virtue, so we closed down British industry. That was great for emissions, not great for communities. Our notional emissions have fallen but all we've done is export jobs and industry to China, where they burn coal to produce the goods we then import on diesel-burning barges and ships – and that includes the vast bulk of all renewables industry.' Though he emphasises that he is not a climate change denier – 'We're not in the same place as the US New Right' – he believes that current energy policy is a gift to Farage. 'We have been decarbonising through deindustrialisation and it's counterproductive because the communities that have seen their industries closed down, they've been abandoned and will end up voting for the right, and exactly the way that they have in America.' Smith fears that the political ramifications of net zero could be greatest of all in his native Scotland – he lives in Paisley – where Labour aims to prevent the SNP winning a fifth term next May. 'On the current policies, I don't believe that Labour can win in Scotland,' he warned of the government's decision to ban new North Sea oil and gas licences. 'People don't get that energy is an emotional issue in Scotland. We went hundreds of miles out in this inhospitable sea and built this incredible, groundbreaking energy infrastructure. 'If you're on the west coast of Scotland, most people of a certain age have a drop of oil from Sullom Voe because there are so many families who were involved in building that project when they landed the oil in Shetland. This was an emotional story about Scotland. It's important to its sense of self and the economy, and I don't think people have really got that.' While Starmer is expected to grant permission to the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea – which are exempt as existing licences – he has consistently reaffirmed the ban on new ones. 'That is absolutely our position,' he recently declared (a stance that Trump publicly derided ahead of his planned meeting with Starmer in Aberdeen). Does Smith believe that Labour will ultimately be forced to rethink its policy? 'They will have to rethink it because the consequences in terms of energy prices, in terms of national security, in terms of the economy and jobs, are so profound. What we should be doing is taking a public stake in what is left of the oil and gas sector and using the profits for that sector, or part of them, to invest in a new green future. We should be talking about North Sea Two, how we're going to collaborate with Norway – not just decarbonising the North Sea, but what comes next. Oil and gas is not the enemy: it's actually the gateway to whatever comes next, and we've got to stop seeing it as a threat.' The GMB's stances have often put it at odds with the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband – who has championed net zero as the 'economic opportunity of the 21st century' – but Smith hints at something of a rapprochement: 'I hope and think that Ed realises that in haemorrhaging jobs through this charge to net zero, the political consequences could be very, very profound for Labour. I get a sense that he's starting to listen and I think he also knows that a lot of these new, fashionable green companies are vehemently anti-union. 'And that's a huge problem because it's completely at odds with the government's agenda. Sea Wall in the North East – we're fighting for recognition there and have a strike ballot – they've had access to tens of millions of pounds of government funding and they're anti-union. Octopus Energy? Anti-union.' We return to Labour's future. Even those who sympathise with Starmer often say they do not know what he stands for ('There is no project,' one loyalist MP recently told me). 'If I'm honest with you, I don't think we've clearly defined what Starmerism is,' Smith said. 'There's huge opportunities post-globalisation and post-neoliberalism. How do we grasp those? 'Keir has done some really good stuff on the international stage. But we need to have a national mission and people need to believe again that there is a brighter tomorrow. Labour does need to be that light on the hill.' Just a year into government, cabinet ministers already speculate about whether Starmer will fight the next election. Does that surprise Smith? 'I always said that people underestimated him – let's see. He's got a huge and really tough job but people have underestimated him before. I never thought I'd see a Labour government again in my working life; Keir was part of the team that delivered that extraordinary election result last year and I think he deserves a bit of credit and a bit of time. If they end up all just turning on each other, stabbing each other in the back, it'll just be electoral disaster for them.' [See more: Can Nigel Farage have it both ways?] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related

Government and opposition alike must do much better
Government and opposition alike must do much better

Times

time4 hours ago

  • Times

Government and opposition alike must do much better

Out of the three parties that matter most, only one will be looking forward to autumn. When parliament packed up for the summer recess this time last year, the new Labour administration had a stonking majority, a sense of confidence and a clear plan of action. Twelve months on, morale has collapsed. Rarely have a government's fortunes declined so far, so fast. This is not the consequence of world events or the vagaries of the global economy: Sir Keir Starmer is to blame. He came into power with the stated aim of boosting the economy's performance to improve public services. But prioritising growth demanded a degree of discipline that he has signally failed to demonstrate. Although the government has chalked up a few achievements — for instance, in reforming the planning system — too often other considerations have taken precedence over growth. Workers' rights have been strengthened to the detriment of companies. Taxes on employers have been raised with the consequence that firms are hiring fewer people. Higher pay for public servants has contributed to the deterioration of public finances. The government's big effort to rein in spending centred on its planned reform of the welfare system, but Labour backbenchers rebelled against it. Instead of facing up to the rebels by making the issue a vote of confidence, the prime minister backed down. Predictably, this cave-in has encouraged further dissent. The prime minister's problem is that he is a conciliator rather than a leader. That is why he has proved to be an effective diplomat in his dealings with foreign leaders. With his low-key style, he has succeeded in improving Britain's relationship with Europe, in encouraging European leaders to co-operate over defence and in establishing a good working relationship with Donald Trump, despite the two men's glaring ideological differences. These external successes cannot compensate for Sir Keir's domestic failures, however. They have cost him credibility and the economy momentum. In the past two months, national output has shrunk while public debt continues to mount. In June, the government borrowed £20.7 billion. That is £6.6 billion more than in June last year and £3.6 billion more than expected. As Sir Keir has lost focus on the economy, concentrating on averting short-term difficulties rather than pursuing a coherent agenda, he has come to look like a tactical politician rather than a strategic one. Both MPs and voters are increasingly unclear about what his government is for. Labour is divided between pragmatists who want order in the public finances and leftwingers who want to spend more. The autumn budget, in which Rachel Reeves will have to reconcile the conflicting demands of the bond markets and Labour MPs' desire to protect social spending, will be a pivotal moment in the government's life. Sir Keir's greatest boon has been the state of the Conservative Party. Despite a welcome recent attempt to reassert the party's commitment to fiscal rectitude in the wake of the government's welfare debacle, Kemi Badenoch has failed to establish a clear identity around which her party can coalesce. At 23.7 per cent, its share of the vote in the last election was the lowest yet; it has declined further in polling since then, to 17 per cent. This week's reshuffle will not by itself reverse the Tories' decline: changes in personnel cannot compensate for the lack of a compelling story. The one party that has succeeded in devising one in the past year is Reform. Nigel Farage has capitalised on the loss of direction in both main parties to seize a commanding lead in the polls. Sir Keir and Ms Badenoch need to develop better ways of countering Mr Farage over the summer, or he will make short work of them in the coming year. For both, it is a case of 'must do better'.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store