A Birmingham councillor claimed fed-up residents in a tower block resorted to paying for a skip because their bins weren’t emptied properly. Coun Marcus Bernasconi said the rubbish collection service was “failing” the occupants of the block, who faced “patchy or absent” waste collection.
He spoke at a city council meeting where the authority’s plans to change its rubbish collection operation was discussed. It is set to end weekly household rubbish pick-ups from April this year, switching to a fortnightly service with extra recycling bins to allow taxpayers – facing a second successive council tax rise of nearly ten per cent – to more easily dispose of paper, card and food waste.
But Coun Bernasconi (Lab, North Edgbaston ) said it was “critical” the shake-up achieved its aim of providing a predictable and reliable service. “There is a block in my ward where they’ve got large, green Birmingham City Council bins for their residual waste collection,” he said.
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“And due to patchy or absent collections, they’ve actually had to resort to buying and renting their own skip to remove their waste which costs them great expense. I’m sure everyone will agree that is not something we should be asking our residents to do, to pick up where our own service is failing.”
Coun Majid Mahmood, the cabinet member for environment, agreed providing a reliable service was important for the council. “I don’t want to see any residents stressing over whether they’re going to get a bin collection,” he said.
“That has happened in various parts and there’s also been continuous issues in specific tower blocks or maisonettes which we tend to then monitor going forward.” He said bringing in crews to replace the normal ones “sometimes causes a problem”.
But he said new technology would make a positive difference and the current system was being reviewed around tower blocks and maisonettes. “All of us will want to see a best-in-class service,” Coun Mahmood continued.
Cllr Majid Mahmood, cabinet member for transport and environment
(Image: Martin O’Callaghan/Birmingham Live)
“We don’t want to see a single complaint coming through to customer services because of non-collection. No resident should have to go and pay for their own skip. It’s a service that we have to by law provide to residents.
“If there’s specific issues, for example there might be more people living in those flats than we know as a council, that’s something that we need to intervene with.” Coun Mahmood previously said the changes would provide Brummies “with a better waste collection service that is in line with other councils”.
“I know some residents are concerned about moving to a fortnightly residual waste service, but this will not be introduced until we have the food waste collections, meaning people will have less general waste,” he said. ”There will be a phased introduction and we will be communicating all the changes to residents.”
He also said during a cabinet meeting last year that residents who could not accommodate an extra recycling bin would be offered a reusable sack. The council has said it will support the changes by investing in a new fleet of lorries and food waste collection vehicles.
READ MORE: £153m cuts and 9.99 per cent council tax hike on way for Brummies
It added it will replace and upgrade its IT system to help drivers communicate with its operations centre in real time. The council agreed to a wave of proposed cuts, and the move to a fortnightly residual waste service, last year amid Birmingham-specific issues, such as an equal pay fiasco and the disastrous implementation of a new IT and finance system, as well as other factors such as the rising demand for services and funding cuts.
The council’s planned schedule for when the changes to bin collections are set to be introduced can be found here.