Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands

Debate between Wendy Morton and Laurence Turner

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for waste collection in Birmingham and the West Midlands.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, and to open this debate. Waste collections and waste services are at the heart of what local authorities do, and underpin an essential part of the daily service that they provide to their taxpayers. However, over the last 12 months there has been a breakdown in waste collection services in Birmingham, which has impacted the wider west midlands area, including my own constituency in the borough of Walsall, because of the year-long industrial action in the Labour-run city.

The industrial action has led to rubbish being piled high on the streets, fly tipping across the city and, in neighbouring boroughs such as mine, rats—or as they have become known, “squeaky blinders”—running rampant through the streets. The Army has even been called in to manage a logistical operation to prevent a public health disaster. The region is being reported right across the globe for all the wrong reasons. I spoke with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell), who is sadly unable to be with us today; he reported that the situation in his town is, in some areas, getting worse.

I want to start by focusing on some positives from my own Conservative borough of Walsall. Like all boroughs, Walsall faces challenges with waste collection, waste management and, importantly, waste crime. Just before Christmas, our council cabinet approved a new waste strategy for 2025 to 2035: “Waste Not, Want Not: Walsall’s Journey to Sustainability”. At its heart, it recognises that waste management is fundamental to public health.

Central to the ambition will be the opening of a new state-of-the-art household waste recycling centre and waste transfer station in my own Aldridge-Brownhills constituency. That £32 million investment is designed to reduce the volume of waste going to landfill by improving recycling rates and sorting capacity. It has the capacity to manage up to 40,000 tonnes of waste a year. A reuse shop and workshop area will also operate on site, refurbishing items for resale and keeping usable goods out of the waste stream.

Last September our council invested a further £4.4 million in key areas of environmental enforcement, which was seen as a priority by members of the public. That additional support includes a fly-tipping crackdown, an expansion of fixed-penalty notices, bulky-waste enforcement and an expansion of CCTV—things that, as I know from my own inbox and social media, matter to people. That series of initiatives will have a significant impact on ensuring better environment management. I congratulate the council on it.

Good environmental management and waste collection is also massively underpinned by networks of volunteers who, week in and week out, go about their communities to clear rubbish or pick up litter. In my own constituency, we are greatly supported by volunteers such as Mike Hawes in Aldridge, Bev Cooper in Pheasey Park Farm and Martin Collins in Pelsall—to name but a few. They give their time freely to maintain civic pride in our communities. I also commend the work of Keep Britain Tidy, an organisation that helps foster thousands of people taking action to reduce litter, protect nature and create a cleaner, greener future for everyone.

Improving the environment on our doorsteps is so important. Positive action by local councils such as my own in Walsall, along with a strong network of community volunteers assisted by organisations such as Keep Britain Tidy, are helping us promote environmental management and responsibility, to reduce waste crime and improve our ability to focus on improved rates of waste management and recycling.

The same cannot be said of our nearest neighbours in Birmingham. When there is a major industrial waste dispute on the doorstep, that impacts on neighbouring communities and the wider region—as the strike in Birmingham has most definitely demonstrated. The ongoing saga that is the Birmingham bin strike has now entered its second year. The whole strike is causing massive reputational damage to the United Kingdom’s second city and to the wider west midlands region. Indeed, the battering that the city has taken stretches across the globe, with news outlets such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, under the headline “Rats on the loose”, and the international press openly debating the mayhem in the midlands as those squeaky blinders ran riot.

The sheer cost to the taxpayer is also simply eye-watering. Between January and August last year, the council spent £8.4 million on agency staff and a further £5 million on outsourced contractors—a staggering total of £1.65 million per month. That is three times the monthly spend on waste collection services in 2024, which were costing £533,000 per month—all this from a council that is effectively bankrupt. At the same time, it is estimated that the council has lost £4.4 million in revenue as it was forced to suspend garden waste services to prioritise waste collections.

If the strike continues until the end of March, the one-off costs, including additional street cleaning and security as well as lost income, are anticipated to rise to £14.6 million. On 28 January 2025, almost a year ago, Birmingham city council acknowledged its extremely poor recycling rates, which are the second lowest of any unitary authority in the country at only 22.9%. That is a far cry from the 65% target expected by local authorities in 2035. Of course, such was the impact of the strikes across the city that one of the first services to be cancelled was recycling.

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I am sorry to have missed the start of the right hon. Lady’s speech. I am listening carefully to what she says. I am curious to know whether she raised concerns about the cancellation of services in Birmingham in the days when the authority was suffering the sharpest cuts in funding of any metropolitan council, amounting to 40p in the pound for every Brummie.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, my Birmingham neighbour, for his intervention. In relation to the issue of waste, my focus is the impact on my constituency. It is just over 10 years since I was first elected, and this is the worst situation that I have ever seen on my doorstep. I have staff members living in the Labour-run Birmingham city council area who still have wrapping paper from Christmas 2024 in their recycling bins.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Morton]

No, I am not. The reason why the commissioners were put in place was that Labour-run Birmingham city council was failing. That is why the commissioners came in. I am saying that we are facing a lack of political leadership.

I try to raise this issue in various fora, but nobody seems to want to get it resolved. What bothers me most is that there are residents who pay their council tax and who need a voice. They need somebody to stand up alongside other Birmingham MPs and councillors and say, “It is time to get this fixed.” The other reason why I am standing up on this issue is that I have constituents who work in the sector. They are being impacted, as are the peripheral parts of my constituency, as in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas). It is my constituents who have to pay the extra cost for the extra fly-tipping. That cannot be fair.

The net result of cancelling recycling is that the already poor figure of 22% has plummeted to just 15%. There are major fly-tipping hotspots right across the city; when bins go uncollected for months on end, fly-tipping respects no borders. In Pheasey Park Farm ward, which borders the Birmingham city council area, we have seen a constant uptick in people crossing the border to fly-tip.

In all of this, the point about the consistent lack of political leadership keeps cropping up. Where has the Labour Mayor of the West Midlands been through all of this? Nowhere. As recently as 18 December, he said on Radio West Midlands:

“I don’t employ the workforce”.

He also said:

“I have done all I can.”

To be honest, to the outside world that does not appear to have been an awful lot—that is my reply, Mr Mayor.

The mayor may not employ the workforce—I get that—but he knows the reputational damage that is being done not just to Birmingham but to the wider west midlands. As the most senior elected politician in the region, he should have been far more proactive and visible in ensuring that a resolution was found, or in encouraging people to get round the table to sort the situation out. Does anyone believe that had Andy Street still been the Mayor of the West Midlands, he would not have moved heaven and earth to ensure that the escalation of the strike was stopped, and the dispute resolved, at the earliest opportunity? I am pretty damn certain that he would have done so.

Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, some of whom were appointed as far back as September of last year, have responded to me and others in the House, but it appears that they have not even held meetings with the leaders of Birmingham city council so that a resolution can be moved towards.

[Laurence Turner]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Wendy Morton]

Of course; I am nothing if not generous.

[Laurence Turner]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way; she is indeed being generous with her time. I listened to her comments about the former Mayor of the West Midlands with half a smile on my face; in my constituency I find that I have to chase up on endless promises made to my constituents about things that would be delivered—promises that were as real as fairy dust. However, that is a topic for another day. Does the right hon. Lady accept, and I say this as a former trade union official, that there are only ever two parties to a dispute? In this case, they are the union and the council. Those are the two parties who need to sort out this dispute. To suggest otherwise gives an impression to our constituents that is not accurate.

[Wendy Morton]

No—with all due respect, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Ultimately, there may be only two parties who can find a resolution, and I would be the first to admit that I am not a trade union specialist nor a trade union member, but I am saying there needs to be leadership on behalf of the residents, with someone saying that we need to get this resolved once and for all. That is what is absolutely lacking.

If the Mayor of the West Midlands will not show any political leadership, Ministers should surely show some. Where are the leaders of Labour Birmingham city council? Councillor John Cotton walked away from negotiations on 9 July; that is 196 days ago today. To me, that is not political leadership; it is letting down the communities that he serves and that elected him.

We constantly hear the refrain that the hands of the political leadership at Birmingham city council are tied, because, of course, of the intervention of the commissioners, which was highlighted earlier. If we accept that, then we also have to accept that the commissioners are the appointees of the Government, and are now—under this Government—responsible to Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. That is surely where we should be getting the political leadership, or even common sense, that is badly needed to resolve this dispute once and for all.

This strike is harming residents, it is harming local communities and it is harming our reputation. As recently as last week, civic leaders were calling for urgent action to end this dispute, and they quite rightly commented:

“Waste collection is not an optional extra, it is a fundamental public service”.

The Government must take heed, because waste collection is a fundamental service. When people cannot manage waste collections, they cannot manage their local authority, because they have fundamentally let down their residents at the most basic level.

To conclude, now is the time for action on the part of this Government to get to grips with waste management in Birmingham, to ensure that this ongoing industrial action stops impacting not just Birmingham residents but those in the wider west midlands, including the borough of Walsall.

Fly-tipping: West Midlands

Debate between Wendy Morton and Laurence Turner

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of fly-tipping on communities in the West Midlands.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue, particularly as the debate coincides with the conclusion of the Great British spring clean, in which many colleagues, from both sides of the House, take part.

Fly-tipping is a growing concern not only in my Aldridge-Brownhills constituency but across the wider west midlands region and beyond, as I have noticed of late on my social media and in my inbox. Once people were aware of this debate, a number of them got in touch to say that they have fly-tipping issues locally. In some areas it has become a persistent and damaging problem. It is vital that we come together to explore practical solutions and collaborative efforts to tackle its impact on our communities. I consider litter and fly-tipping to be an expensive nuisance; that sums it up in a short and succinct way.

Keep Britain Tidy, which does so much to raise awareness of fly-tipping and littering, estimates that local authorities in England dealt with 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents in 2023-24—up by 6% on the year before. Sixty per cent of all fly-tipping involves household waste. It costs the economy a staggering £1 billion, and there is enough fly-tipped waste to fill Wembley stadium 30 times over. It is shocking to see that amount of fly-tipping in this day and age.

Of course, those of us who represent the west midlands are dealing with our own fly-tipping and littering situation thanks to Labour-run Birmingham city council’s bin strike. I am a bit disappointed that there are no Birmingham city representatives on the Government Benches, although there is a colleague from—is it Birmingham Northfield?

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Wendy Morton]

There we go. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has joined the debate, because there is a large number of Labour MPs in Birmingham city.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I absolutely support recycling schemes, as do Conservatives more broadly. That specific vote, which I believe was before the hon. Lady came into the House, was not UK-wide, and I think that was the issue. We need to work cross-party to find the best way forward on recycling and bottle deposit and return schemes. Any scheme has to work with individuals, communities and producers.

The ongoing bin strike in Labour-run Birmingham is now having a detrimental effect on every one of us who shares a border with Birmingham. For example, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), who cannot be with us today, abuts Hall Green in Birmingham. On one side, the bins are piling up, whereas over the border on the other side, in Conservative-run Solihull, the streets are clean. In the past few weeks my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) has highlighted the similar situation on the border of his constituency.

[Laurence Turner]

The right hon. Lady highlights an issue that affects my constituency, as well as that of the hon. Member for Bromsgrove. Given that party politics were mentioned, I want to put on the record the fact that there have been disruptive bin strikes in Conservative-run authorities over recent years—Wiltshire, Adur and Worthing all spring to mind. Does the right hon. Lady agree that there is no particular party pattern and that Conservative-run authorities are by no means immune to the issues she raises?

[Wendy Morton]

I was hoping this was not going to be an entirely party political debate, because there is so much cross-party support when it comes to tackling these issues. My biggest concern is the magnitude of the Birmingham strike and making sure that it gets sorted out. Several right hon. and hon. Friends have been raising the issue. The amount of uncollected waste has risen to a staggering 21,000 tonnes, which is an eye-watering amount. It is also eye-watering that we now have rats as big as cats hurtling around the city. We all know that these squeaky blinders, as they have been named, do not respect borders.

I have heard that some city residents are burning the waste, as they simply do not know when the next bin collection will take place. I have staff members who live in Birmingham and have not had their waste collected for more than a month, and who have had no recycling collection services all year. This is not right and not fair, so it is only right and proper that we call on the Government to sort it out.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is not able to be present, but he agrees that the situation facing residents is abominable. Some residents are taking responsibility by going to recycling centres, which is sensible, but that is having a knock-on effect in constituencies such as mine, with people seeking to access our recycling centres in Aldridge. It was reported that on one occasion this brought gridlock to Aldridge. It is worth remembering that when that happens, Walsall council tax payers are left footing the Bill.

At its worst, as has been observed in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, in the absence of councils doing their job, sorting out the bin strikes and cleaning up the mess, people are driving out of the city to dump rubbish. We now have a bin strike that is a major public health emergency, as the Minister will be aware. Andy Street said last week that it is having a major impact on the reputation of Birmingham and the wider west midlands, which will take years to recover from. Birmingham is making headlines on a daily basis as far away as Australia, for all the wrong reasons. The longer the stand-off goes on, the worse the situation will become, with more than 4,000 tonnes of rubbish being added weekly to the current 21,000 tonnes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate. We will talk about some of the specific issues she raised in relation to Birmingham, but this issue attracts attention in every region and, as she rightly said, is an issue across the west midlands region.

I pay tribute to some of the volunteer groups in my constituency, such as the Rubery Wombles, who do excellent work. Just this weekend I joined a community litter pick to clear one of the walkways off Torre Avenue in Northfield, which had accumulated a volume of fly-tipped litter. That did not come about through a particular organised group; it was simply residents getting in contact and suggesting that we come together to take matters into our own hands and clear that waste.

The right hon. Lady made some valid points about areas where there is an overlap in responsibility between national agencies, such as National Highways, and local authorities, and some of the problems that can arise, which I am sure are familiar to all Members through their constituency casework.

The right hon. Lady spoke about working together, and started by talking about who was here in the Chamber. In case it is not clear, let me point out for the record not only that am I standing here as a Birmingham city MP, but that of the three political parties that represent the city of Birmingham in Parliament, only Labour is represented in this debate today.

[Wendy Morton]

I did apologise at the time for forgetting the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Forgive me; I will not do that again. On the point about balance, I am a Conservative with a west midlands seat, so the Conservative party is represented in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) may be a Scottish Conservative, but I will not hold that against him—he is part of this debate too.

[Laurence Turner]

The right hon. Lady is exactly right to say that there is west midlands Conservative party representation; I was merely making a point about the city.

We do not have the same figures for the region, but nationally, fly-tipping incidents rose by 37% between 2010-11 and 2023-24. For the west midlands, where records start a little later, the increase has been higher—the number of recorded fly-tipping incidents rose by 80% between 2012-13 and 2023-24. Within the city of Birmingham, that increase was lower until we got to this current, very difficult period of industrial disputes. This is an issue in communities across the whole region, and I see it in my own constituency. As I said, just yesterday residents and users of Bell Holloway in Northfield, which is an arterial route in the constituency, found that the road had been closed due to fly-tipping in nearby woodland. It is not the first time that such an incident has happened on that particular road.

Through my constituency postbag, I have picked up on a large number of very serious recurring cases across the constituency. There is a set of flats in the Longbridge area where there is some confusion over land ownership and organised groups are seemingly taking advantage of this grey area to repeatedly fly-tip at that location. I know that fly-tipping is a serious problem on private land, in particular when landowners may not have the resources to respond to regular and large-volume fly-tipping.

I pay tribute to everyone who works in my office; as MPs, we individually take up casework, but of course it is the people who work for us who take on much of the heavy load. I have cleared regular fly-tipping in Weoley castle car park, and have helped to secure permanent physical adaptations at a site on the Frankley estate, which has helped to deter repeat fly-tippers.

Turning to the strike in Birmingham, just this morning there was an unfortunate incident involving the mobile waste centres that are being sent out around the city, which over the last week have sadly become the subject of misinformation about when and where they will be deployed. Overnight, a very large amount of black-bagged waste was dumped on Vardon Way in Kings Norton, which of course will reduce the capacity for residents who attend that mobile service at the advertised time. I pay tribute to Councillor Corrigan for Kings Norton North, who I have worked closely with over the last 24 hours to ensure that waste is cleared.

[Laurence Turner]

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a member of Unite. I was on the BBC over the weekend to talk about exactly these issues. There has been a change in the policing of the egress from the depots, one of which is in my constituency. Also, at the start of last week, a major incident was declared in Birmingham. I support the action taken, which should lead to a 40% increase in the number of trucks that are able to leave the depots. I hope that means that there will be a change in the frequency of collections.

[Wendy Morton]

Does the hon. Member agree that, although a public emergency was declared, it is good news if a few more trucks are getting out because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) said, lorries have been slowed as they have tried to get out of the depots? The only way to crack this is to break the strike, and for the Government, Birmingham city council and, if necessary, the commissioners to get back round the table and sort this, because the only people who are losing out are the residents.

[Laurence Turner]

A 40% increase is more than “a few”, by any measure, but on the right hon. Lady’s substantive point, I was a trade union official, and in my experience the vast majority of disputes are ended by the two parties involved—in this case, Unite the union and Birmingham city council—coming to an agreement. Talks have resumed and that is positive. Members of this House have a responsibility through our words and rhetoric not to make a resolution less likely to be achieved. The exact details are held by the people in those discussions. I hope we will see some news from those discussions soon, because the strike needs to come to an end, and I hope that the offer on the table will be put to Unite members in a ballot.

The reality is that the bin collection service in my constituency was not good enough before the strike; that is an important point that we cannot lose sight of. Waste collection rates in the city of Birmingham are too low. That has a consequence for the council’s finances, as well as for the environment. I have serious concerns about the number of commercial contracts that I hear anecdotally are being cancelled because of the lack of reliability of the service during the strike and the potential implications for the city’s financing.

The context that has not been touched on is local government funding. That has a particular expression in Birmingham, but it affects all our constituencies—although the situation in Scotland is a devolved matter. We all remember when the previous Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), boasted that he had redirected funding away from what he called “deprived” cities to more affluent areas. That is certainly what we have seen in Birmingham.

Research that I have commissioned from the House of Commons Library shows that over the last decade Birmingham has suffered the sharpest decrease in spending power of any unitary authority in England. Taking inflation into account, residents of the city have lost more than 40p per £1 for every single person. We have lost more than 60% of the staff at Birmingham city council because need has risen in addition to that broad fall in spending.

The challenges are not confined to Birmingham—although because of its levels of deprivation perhaps the wave hit there first. When we look locally, Solihull, Dudley, Worcestershire and Shropshire are all councils that are experiencing severe financial difficulties; indeed, the scale of the cuts proposed in Shropshire is greater as a proportion of the council’s revenue than those planned in Birmingham.

Of course, the extremely difficult financial inheritance has an effect on the ability of local authorities to monitor and enforce fly-tipping prevention. Keep Britain Tidy has said, appropriately enough, that we are facing a “tipping point”. Some of those problems are attitudinal, and as has been said, once people know that they can dump once and not face effective sanction, it is more likely to happen again.

West Midlands police has an important role to play in preventing fly-tipping, but it still has 1,200 fewer police officers and police community support officers than it did in 2010. The police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, recently submitted a bid to the Home Office to employ an additional 150 police officers. It would be a good start if that were granted.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for explaining that the police and crime commissioner has bid for some additional police officers, because try as I might, using written parliamentary questions and debates, I have been unable to find out how many police officers the west midlands will be getting out of the 13,000. Despite budgets and everything else, does the hon. Member agree that if someone is resident in Birmingham, where they have had a council tax increase of 17.5% in the last couple of years, all they want is to get the strike ended, their bins emptied and the streets tidy again?

[Laurence Turner]

I think what people in my constituency want is a regular and reliable service. They want the current backlog to be cleared. Some streets in my constituency have not had a collection for four or five weeks. Of course, that is completely unacceptable, particularly when other streets have had much more regular collections, even during the strike period. We need to modernise the service.

Council tax is a burden on all our constituents. The impact assessment for the 10% council tax increase in Birmingham last year made it clear that approval for that increase was given by No. 10 and the Treasury when they were under Conservative leadership. The decision has been taken this year not to go ahead with the second 10% increase that had been planned under the Conservatives. I think that is positive. We are also starting to see significant funding coming into the city, which reflects the higher level of need. Over many years, we heard from the Conservatives that they were going to introduce a fair funding review for local government. It never happened. I am glad that action is finally being taken on this matter, but it takes time to turn these situations around. I hope that we see progress on these matters soon.

To return to discussion of the Government’s plans, I note that I received a reply, not from the Minister present, who I know also takes these matters extremely seriously, but from the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), who is also a west midlands MP. In answer to a written parliamentary question, she said:

“We have committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.”

That is a welcome and sensible measure, and I hope that we will hear from today’s Minister, either during the debate or when we come back from recess, about what actions are planned, because people in my constituency are fed up with the actions of the organised criminal groups that are taking advantage of wider problems in society, including the severe restriction on resources for our councils and our police.