Birmingham residents lament as rubbish piles up, with rats as big as feet
Since the council declared itself bankrupt, and bin workers went on strike, the city’s streets have become clogged with bin bags and fly-tipping.
As he walks through the streets of Small Heath in east Birmingham, Gerry Moynihan threads as if he is tackling an obstacle course, avoiding piled-up bin bags, dumped cars and fridges, fly-tipped furniture and discarded nitrous oxide canisters that clutter the pavements.
Residents across the city have raised alarm at the growing level of litter and fly-tipping, which they say has worsened since the Labour-run city council declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2022, and even more so since bin workers started strike action this month in a dispute over roles being scrapped to save money.
There are also fears the situation could get drastically worse when the council reduces waste bin collections to once a fortnight, instead of once a week, in a cost-cutting measure being introduced from April.
Dumped rubbish and discarded cars and vans in the Bordesley area of Birmingham Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Moynihan, a community activist based in nearby Bordesley Green, regularly walks the streets of the city to document the worst instances of litter and fly-tipping, and to flag issues to the council.
“Throughout the city you will now find, where there’s dumped rubbish, they are just putting barriers up around it instead of removing it. It’s a quick, cheap alternative,” he says. “And fly-tipping is one thing, but look at the gutters as well, they never get cleaned. It’s everywhere.”
One of the worst-affected areas is around Camelot Way, an area where primary and secondary schools sit alongside industrial units and car garages. A burnt-out caravan full of fly-tipped rubbish has been encircled by barriers, while bin bags, car detritus and mud clog the pavements – the problem has been reported to the council for years, residents say, and the piles likened to Mount Everest.
“It massively concerns me because my child, she’s four years old and she has to walk up Camelot Way to get to school,” says Mohammed Shafqat. “With the rubbish, with the flooding that we get because the drains are blocked, it’s a massive hazard.
“My wife now takes a much wider route home because my daughter could easily catch her head or eye on a dumped vehicle that’s got no front end on it. It’s just ridiculous. It is a stain on our community and it looks really, really bad.”
Mohammed Shafqat among the fly-tipping and discarded cars on Camelot Way. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
The area is actually in better shape than usual, thanks to a joint police and city council action the day before to remove a large part of the rubbish. “Short-term solutions are great, but the long-term solution is there has to be enforcement around here. Or it will just got back to the way it was,” says Shafqat.
A couple of streets over, barriers have been erected around a pile of dumped tarmac, which Moynihan says he has been reporting for over a year. “I’m going to come down with some candles for its birthday if the council haven’t moved it,” he says.
He walks over to a huge pile of fly-tipping that he says has sat for months blocking the emergency access point to the train line that runs between Birmingham and Leamington Spa, the security cameras overhead not having acted as a deterrent.
“For the council, it’s not costing them anything for the rubbish to sit here. And prosecuting is expensive for them,” he says.
As part of budget cuts announced in 2024, Birmingham city council plans to remove its team responsible for street quality audits and neighbourhood waste contamination, and has increased the fee for bulky waste removal from £35 to £45. It has also introduced a fee for rat control treatments, nicknamed the rat tax.
In a city that also struggles with high levels of deprivation – it is home to the two constituencies with the highest child poverty rate in the UK, at 55% – many can’t afford to pay that fee, and rubbish is starting to stack up.
Over in Allens Cross, in the south-west of the city, Leanne Gregory has started litter-picking with her five-year-old son, Jude, after becoming fed up with the state of the streets around her home.
“Bin collections are being missed a lot, so you’ve got bin bags overspilling out of bins, rubbish getting blown around, rats at the bins, cats at the bins. And this has been a problem for months and months,” she says. “People don’t have cars so they can’t take stuff to the tip, and then we get people fly-tipping here on top of that.”
Leanne Gregory out litter-picking with her five-year-old son, Jude. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
She is particularly alarmed at the prospect of fortnightly bin collections, and says she thinks the most deprived parts of the city will be worst affected. A previous council report suggested they would use “intelligence” to identify places which may have to revert to weekly collections.
“This is the sort of community that is not going to cope,” she says. “This is a poor, marginalised council estate, historically. You’ve got a rise in HMOs [houses in multiple occupation], and often families of five or six people living in a three-bedroom house; the bins are already overflowing.
“I’ve been highlighting that this is not the sort of area you want to be moving to bi-weekly bin collections because it’s going to be an absolute tip. And we’ve got rats as big as your feet already.”
But she says she has hope that the community will rally together to create change. A local litter-picking hub is due to open in the coming months, which will allow people to rent equipment for free.
“When people see me and my son out collecting litter, they respond, they smile – they don’t want to live with rubbish all over the street, with fly-tipping. They don’t want that,” she says. “We might be poor, but we have respect, you know what I mean? We have self-respect.”
Majid Mahmood, Birmingham city council’s cabinet member for environment and transport, said: “There is no excuse for people fly-tipping, and when we can identify the culprits, we do not hesitate to take enforcement action or prosecute offenders. So far this financial year, the courts have handed out a range of penalties with fines averaging £3,500, as well as various court orders, including seizure and destruction of vehicles.
“Our crews clear around 600 fly-tipping reports each week; this is in addition to the work our neighbourhood crews undertake to clean up across the city. There are many legitimate ways to get rid of waste, including using one of our five household waste recycling centres or, if people don’t have a car, then they can use our bulky waste collection service. This is in addition to the mobile household waste recycling service which operates in parts of the city, and around 1,500 responsible residents use this service, collecting around 30 tonnes of waste each week.
“I know some residents are concerned about moving to a fortnightly collection, but this will not be introduced until we have food waste collections, something all councils will be required to do by March 2026. Introducing food waste collections will mean people have less general waste, as this represents around 30% of what is thrown away. Other additional bins for recycling will also provide residents with more capacity.”
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