Mile-long queue at Birmingham waste site as bin strikes continue

Mobile bin collection points in Birmingham have seen mile-long queues as residents try to get rid of their uncollected rubbish.

There were traffic delays around Woodgate Valley Park on Friday after Birmingham City Council opened a mobile site at 07:45 BST. The move was amid the all-out strike, which was declared a major incident on Monday.

Elsewhere, striking bin workers, who are members of Unite the Union, claimed they were "threatened" with arrest and fines if they continued to delay bin lorries leaving a depot in Tyseley.

The council previously said Unite was stopping them from operating a contingency service, which would allow them to make one bin collection to every household a week.

One person, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC there was a large police presence in the area earlier.

He said: "Waggons started to make their move out of the front gate and nobody was allowed to hamper them.

"I was told anybody getting arrested today was facing a £1,000 fine per person."

During the all-out strike that began on 11 March, it has been claimed workers on the picket line have walked slowly in front of the bin lorries being driven out.

Unite national lead officer Onay Kasab said the only thing that would end the strike was for the council to resolve its "horrific pay attacks".

He said: "The council is responsible for squandering millions of pounds worth of public resources trying to fight a dispute that it could resolve at a fraction of the cost.

"It is spending more than £6m a year on employment agency fees in the refuse service.

"It is also wasting huge amounts of valuable police time, employing security guards that have nothing to do and pouring untold resources into declaring a major incident.

"These costs dwarf what it would take to undo the pay cuts."

Councillor Timothy Huxtable, who represents Hall Green South, said a "mini tip" had been created by fly-tippers outside Tyseley Community Centre on Thursday.

He told BBC Radio WM: "I've never seen so many black bags piled up. Bags had piled up so high, it blocked the access to the play area - there were kids inside, blocked in.

"The crews did an absolutely magnificent job; they were completely overwhelmed but did the best they could by taking as many black bags off the street as possible.

"The stench was awful."

The strike has led to more than 17,000 tonnes of uncollected waste being left on the streets.

Mr Kasab told workers on the picket line: "This remains not just a dispute that is just morally and principally right but remains a dispute that has a resolution, and you can absolutely win."

William Timms, a pest controller in Birmingham, said since the strikes began, this was the busiest he had ever been.

He said: "Calls have gone up by 60 per cent. I actually pulled out a rat from a trap two weeks ago that was 22 inches in length.

"In a perfect habitat, which is what they're in at the moment, they give birth every three weeks. That's six to 12 pups per female, so we're going to be absolutely inundated."

Mr Timms said even if all the rubbish was collected, the pest issue would still linger, with the rodents likely to start nesting in residents homes or cars.

He called the piles of rubbish a 24-hour banquet and added: "They have all the protein there, so they're getting bigger. They're the size of small kittens."

The pest controller advised residents to store their rubbish in outdoor sheds with hard floors so the rats were unable to get through.

The BBC has seen a leaked letter from Unite general secretary Sharon Graham to deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, where Ms Graham described local negotiations as a farce.

She said the government needed to stop sitting on its hands and called for the Treasury to restructure the council's debts.

Chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones denied the government was failing to act.

He added: "We've continued to support the council and its leaders in Birmingham when it was declared a major incident.

"It was right that we supported the council with that decision, and that's the decision we're having now - to understand what we can do to help resolve it with the immediate issue with the bins not being collected but also to draw a line under the dispute."

The government said Unite should focus on "negotiating in good faith, drop their opposition to changes needed to resolve long-standing pay issues and get round the table" to bring the Birmingham bin strike to an end.

A Number 10 spokesman said: "The residents of Birmingham are our first and foremost priority, and as you will have seen, the local government minister Jim McMahon was in Birmingham yesterday meeting council leaders and commissioners to discuss the council's response and make sure this is being gripped.

"Following that meeting, police have installed barriers at the picket line to prevent waste lorries being recklessly blocked from leaving the depots this morning to start dealing with the backlog.

The BBC has contacted Birmingham City Council for further comment.