04-04-2025
Labour councillors living freebie ‘high life' as rubbish piles high on Birmingham's streets
Labour councillors have accepted hundreds of pounds worth of freebies during Birmingham's bin strike.
The city council's deputy leader attended ballet shows and a Champions League football match as rubbish began to pile high, it has emerged.
The authority's cabinet member for tourism also enjoyed a free meal worth £50 during the crisis, which has led to rats 'as big as cats' plaguing neighbourhoods and even getting into residents' cars.
Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Local residents will be utterly appalled that as their bins pile high, councillors are living the high life.
'Birmingham's ballooning bin crisis is just the latest in a long line of catastrophic failures from this pitiful town hall, with the stench of incompetence and ineptitude almost overpowering that of the growing piles of waste.
'Ministers need to consider whether Birmingham council is fit for purpose, or whether this leviathan of a council needs to be abolished entirely, with a new body or set of bodies formed in its place.'
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, on Thursday was forced by a union boss to intervene in the dispute by sending Jim McMahon, the local government minister, to confront council chiefs.
While the all-out strike was only launched by bin workers last month, mounds of waste began to pile up on Birmingham's streets in January when intermittent walkouts first took place.
One-day strikes on Jan 6, 14 and 22 were followed by a fourth day of strike action on Jan 30.
The evening before, on Jan 29, as the city prepared for another day of missed collections, Sharon Thompson, the council's deputy leader, was in the stands of Villa Park alongside 42,000 other football supporters.
She received a ticket worth approximately £300 from Brindley Capital, an investment firm, to watch Aston Villa beat Celtic 4-2 in the Champions League.
Just over two weeks later on Feb 15, the councillor and a guest were at Symphony Hall, Birmingham's grandest concert venue, for a ballet show celebrating Frederick Ashton, the famed British choreographer.
Four days later on Feb 19, she and a guest watched a ballet performance of Cinderella at the Birmingham Hippodrome.
She later declared the value of the Ashton show tickets as £60 and the Cinderella tickets as £80.
Earlier that month, her council colleague Saima Suleman, the council's cabinet member for digital, culture, heritage and tourism, received a free meal at Asha's Indian Restaurant from the Night Time Industries Association, an organisation representing the UK's night-time venues.
She later declared that the meal was worth £50 and she attended 'on behalf of the [council] leader'.
A council spokesman insisted that the councillors' gifts were related to their work in the authority.
But as they enjoyed the complimentary shows and meals, the bin workers were ramping up their strike action.
Members of Unite announced on Feb 26 that they would escalate their walkouts into an indefinite all-out strike from March 11.
John Hunt, the former leader of the council's Liberal Democrat group, suggested the freebies raised questions over how seriously the council had been treating the industrial action.
He said: 'We've all been wondering whether council leadership is taking this seriously enough.
' Birmingham is on the edge of chaos and the strike is fundamental to solving the city's problems. We had a major incident declared but things only seem to have got worse.'
It is estimated that almost three million wheelie bins worth of waste has been left rotting in the streets.
Workers went on strike over the council's decision to abolish its waste recycling and collection officer role, which is responsible for safety at the back of a refuse lorry.
The council has been under Labour control since 2012 and declared effective bankruptcy in September 2023 as it attempted to juggle a £760 million equal pay bill and an £80 million overspend on an IT project.
John Cotton, the authority's leader, has received more than £1,500 worth of freebies since he took charge in May 2023.
This has included tickets to the musicals Wicked and Hamilton, along with a ticket worth £125 to watch England against the West Indies from the chair's lounge at Edgbaston cricket ground.
Majid Mahmood, the cabinet member in charge of waste services, has also received hundreds of pounds worth of tickets for cricket games in the past two years.
This included tickets to the T20 Vitality Blast final at Edgbaston in September. He did not declare a specific value but hospitality tickets for the game retailed at £359.
Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow business secretary, said: 'Labour councillors living it up on freebies and awarding themselves bumper pay rises, paid for by the local residents who suffer rat-infested rubbish piling high on their streets, tells you everything you need to know about Labour-run councils.
'Meanwhile, the Government continues to sit on its hands, turning a blind eye to the Unite strike barons who are holding the city's refuse services hostage, all because of the tens of millions of pounds that this union has funnelled to the Labour Party and their top team.'
Birmingham city council has been contacted for comment.
