BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL DEBT ‘MAY BE GROWING BY £14 MILLION A MONTH’

The Shadow Cabinet Member for Finance on Birmingham City Council has revealed that the £760 million debt at the heart of the city’s bin strikes could be growing by up to £14 million each month.

Speaking to GB News, Cllr Meirion Jenkins said:

“It’s a dreadful situation. There were 21,000 tons of rubbish left on the streets, although the council claims that some of this is being collected by crews that are being brought in from neighbouring councils.
“It’s entirely attributable to the dreadful Labour administration that we have in Birmingham. It all goes back to 2017 when there was another bin strike.
“In order to solve that dispute, Labour gave benefits to some of the bin workers by introducing an intermediary grade.
“At the time, we said that this will cause an equal pay dispute in due course, and sure enough roll forward eight years we have professionally estimated liability for equal pay of £760 million and the bin men on strike.
“[This is] because the council, in order to remove the equal pay liability, are having to take away that intermediary grade three that they should never have given them in 2017.
“The problem dates right back to legislation from the Blair era, which meant that you could compare workers who were doing quite different jobs. So if you give an advantage to people in, let’s say bin collection, which is predominantly male, but you don’t make that available to other workers who may be doing an entirely different thing, who are predominantly female, it potentially creates an equal pay liability.
“We warned about this in 2017 and they’ve had eight years to put it right. They need to implement a proper grading scheme, which they were supposed to do by March 25.
“For every month that we go past March 2025 that’s £760 million equal pay liability has been calculated to be growing up to £14 million a month.
“Collecting rubbish from the streets is not the Army’s sweet spot and we think it’s just a gesture from the government and the Labour council to try and look serious.
“If they want to fix it, then they have to sort of adopt the plan that we had offered to Labour, who turned down an emergency debate that we asked for on this bin strike, because of the impact it’s having on the health of the city.
“But there are things that could be done, short of bringing in the army to collect rubbish, that would significantly improve the situation.”