'Madness': Birmingham Council to push ahead with fortnightly bin collection plan 'regardless of strike situation'

The Labour-run council, which has been grappling with a financial crisis, says it needs to transform its waste service to improve reliability, hit recycling targets and aid its financial recovery.

The changes, which will see collections of household rubbish move from weekly to fortnightly, were initially meant to be rolled out earlier this year.

Weekly food waste collections and a second recycling bin, specifically for recycling paper and cardboard, were also set to be introduced in phases across Birmingham from April onwards.

But the waste transformation was pushed back to the impact of the ongoing bins strike, which left small mountains of bin bags piling up in city streets during its height.

As the industrial action drags on into the festive period, the council said the changes are now set to start rolling out in June 2026 “regardless of the strike situation”.

Cabinet members at the council agreed to go ahead with the new transformation plans at a meeting on Tuesday (December 9) – but opposition councillors were sceptical about the upcoming changes amid the current turbulence.

“Residents will rightly ask how on earth Labour can justify pushing ahead with a completely new waste system when they can’t even get the current one working,” Conservative councillor Robert Alden said in a statement.

“The council has been unable to collect recycling for a year and yet Labour would have you believe they can successfully introduce food waste recycling during a strike.”

Councillor Alden, leader of the opposition, also urged the council during the meeting to “look again” at its plans to switch to fortnightly collections of household rubbish.

Conservative councillor Ewan Mackey added that it “seems like madness to introduce a new service” amid the current disruption from the strike.

“It wasn’t long ago that we heard the agency workers themselves were going on strike,” he said. “Reputational damage is bad enough.”

‘We’re ready to go’

However Councillor Majid Mahmood, the cabinet member for environment, said last week that he was confident that the rollout would take place next year and dramatically improve the service.

He said changes had been introduced in recent months to support the transformation, including more than 1,100 new routes, a new council-owned fleet and training for staff and managers.

“We have already made some changes, with our new council-owned fleet fully operational,” the Labour councillor said. “[This means] there is less reliance on hired vehicles, improved reliability and better consistency in collections.

“Our crews have the tools they need to deliver a more reliable, efficient service.”

“We’re ready to go on this now,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “We’ve done all the background, done all the mobilisation.

“We’ve very confident that we’ll get the rollout in June.”

The council has also said there will be “extensive communication and engagement” with residents and a trial scheme for the food waste collections from March next year.

On the move to a fortnightly collection of household rubbish, Councillor Mahmood said previously: “I know some residents are concerned […] but this will not be introduced until we have the food waste collections, meaning people will have less general waste.”

He confirmed last week that “all [the changes] will be introduced at the same time” next summer.

Councillor Rob Pocock, the cabinet member overseeing transformation, told the meeting that the proposals were the “biggest transformation in our household waste collection service for at least 25 years”.

“[They] will finally bring to an end this city’s woefully underperforming recycling service,” he added.

“This is a position that has been unacceptable for a very long time.”

The dispute between the council and Unite the union was initially sparked by the loss of the waste recycling and collection officer role.

Striking workers have raised concerns about pay while the Labour-run council’s leadership has repeatedly insisted that a “fair and reasonable” offer had been made.