CITY 'CLAPPING FOR BIN CREWS'

BIRMINGHAM residents have turned out to applaud working bins staff as the city battles to get back to normal, according to the council's bins boss.

- JANE HAYNES

Craig Cooper, strategic director for the council’s operations directorate, was speaking after bin workers rejected the council's latest offer to end the damaging strike.

Despite being “incredibly disappointed”, he said the city was “pulling together” to clean up its streets.

Around 400 members of Unite voted against a new offer that included limited pay protection and compensation for staff affected by a council decision to axe a role held by 170 workers.

The union claims the offer would still have resulted in pay cuts of thousands of pounds for some of its workers, all of them among the lowest paid in the council.

Mr Cooper said senior officers inside the council were now focussing on continued negotiations with the union, while he aimed to maximise resources and coordinate the city’s recovery.

This includes bringing in the council's plans to switch to fortnightly residual waste (black bin) collections as soon as possible, rolling out a new food waste collection scheme, and restarting recycling and green waste projects - but only once the strike has ended.

For now, his focus is on ensuring every household receives a weekly bin collection - and that was beginning to happen, he says.

“Some residents are holding on to rubbish at home, while others have put rubbish on the streets, taken them to the tips or our mobile trucks. Sadly, some has been fly-tipped.