Tories call for government action over bin strike

Senior Conservative politicians have called for government intervention over the "escalating emergency" of Birmingham's ongoing bin strikes.

In a letter to Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Secretary Angela Rayner, they called for action to "tackle the chaos" and said the all-out strikes, which started on 11 March, had left streets "covered in rat-infested rubbish".

They called for "urgent steps", including cutting councillors' pay to put funds towards refuse collection and other services.

The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has been contacted for a response.

Talks between the city council and Unite union aimed at resolving the dispute are set to resume on Monday.

Negotiations collapsed on Thursday and the local authority has threatened compulsory redundancies.

But Unite said it was determined to reach a resolution.

The row centres around the loss of a job role the union claims would mean about 50 staff losing up to £8,000 a year - a figure disputed by the local authority.

Birmingham City Council said it had made a "very fair" offer that would mean no worker would need to lose any money, and that offer remained on the table.

In the letter to Rayner, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart and shadow local government secretary Kevin Hollinrake said the "risk of disease" in the city was "rising by the day" and the Labour government should send in private sector rubbish collectors to "bust" the strikes.

They also called for it to hold a Cobra meeting to bring together different groups, including national and local government officials and public health officials.

In 2023, commissioners were brought in for five years to run the council after it effectively went bankrupt, and the letter called for them to be told to slash councillors' pay after they "shamefully awarded themselves a 5.7% pay rise".

The city council told the BBC the pay rise "was the recommendation of an independent panel and had cross-party agreement" but said the politicians' letter was for the government to respond to.

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