Birmingham’s residents could now witness bin collections on a fortnightly or three week basis from their homes and businesses. The new scheme aims to tackle previous compliance issues with the waste collection programme.
A service review has highlighted that the pile-up of trash on the city’s streets was due to a poor management structure. It explained that a break-down in communication caused a lack of trust between the authorities, bin-men and locals in the area.
The new initiative to clean up the city’s streets should come as no surprise after Birmingham’s ongoing bin strikes finally ended in March of 2019. The industrial action saw as many as 900 bin collection missed, with an overflow of rubbish piling up on the city’s streets, attracting rats and other rodents.
The strike was initiated over alleged secret payments made by the council to non-striking GMB staff in 2017.
The issue was finally resolved after the council agreed to pay around £3,500 to each union worker from Unite and Unison. The city’s bin-men agreed unanimously to the settlement and the further action was called off.
The private review was carried out by Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions UK Ltd. They discovered that the council’s use of older collection vehicles contributed to greater emissions and fuel costs.
There was also minimum action taken by the council to tackle poor compliance with the waste collection scheme. This lack of effort is exempt in Birmingham’s poor recycling rates and dirty streets.
A newly issued report states that the city will be pushed to introduce weekly food waste collection by the year 2023. There will also be more recycling facilities introduced.
As part of their report, Wood stated that: “the majority of councils currently operate a fortnightly residual waste collection, with an increasing trend to move towards even less frequent collections, typically three weekly, which have led to improved recycling rates.”
Cllr John O’Shea, street scene and parks boss for Birmingham City Council commented: “We are already making progress and despite some challenges over Christmas and New Year, the trend on a number of key performance measures, such as missed bin collections, is heading in the right direction. This report gives us the reassurance we are on the right track and has also given us further points to consider to ensure we deliver on the top priority for the people of this city – clean streets.”
It was recommended that Birmingham city council re-design their communications plan and hold a series of consultation sessions open to the public, in order to make the city’s population aware of the upcoming changes.
Manisha Bhanot
