Muhammad Ismael migrated to the UK from Pakistan about a year ago, expecting a better quality of life – but what he found in Birmingham came as a shock.
“I wanted to experience what looked like a first-world country,” the 30-year-old NHS worker said. “But after coming to Birmingham and seeing the bin strike, I don’t think this is part of Britain.”
Having previously supported Labour, he doesn’t think he’ll vote for the party in the local elections. “I have seen so much rubbish everywhere,” he said.
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PROPERTY
New Renters’ Rights Act will affect 13.3 million people
Caption: Nottingham, UK – March 26, 2014: Several property agency signs posted outside terraced houses in Beeston in the East Midlands city of Nottingham, England.
Photographer: georgeclerk
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Source: iStock Unreleased
Copyright: George Clerk www.georgeclerk.com
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 will introduce new rules for private landlords and give tenants new rights from 1 May, 2026.
The Government said the new legislation will will improve the current system for both the 11 million private renters and 2.3 million landlords in England.
What will the new legislation mean for renters?
The Act will give renters much greater security and stability so they can stay in their homes for longer, build lives in their communities, and avoid the risk of homelessness, the Government said.
Caption: STOKE-ON-TRENT – JUNE 16: Various property signs are seen outside a block of terraced houses advertising homes for sale, let or sold on June 16, 2020 in Stoke-on-Trent. The British government have relaxed coronavirus lockdown laws significantly from Monday June 15, allowing zoos, safari parks and non-essential shops to open to visitors. Places of worship will allow individual prayers and protective facemasks become mandatory on London Transport. (Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
Photographer: Nathan Stirk
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Copyright: Nathan Stirk Photography
NEWS
7 min read
The measures to protect tenants
The new rules apply automatically, regardless of whether or not an individual’s tenancy agreement is updated in writing by their landlord.
After 1 May, 2026, it will not be possible for assured tenancy agreements to have a fixed term or a set end date. All tenancies will become rolling tenancies.
Landlords will no longer be able to use rent review clauses for new rent increases.
Renters have the right to request to keep a pet.
Rent can only be raised once a year, and no higher than open market rent.
Landlords will need a legal reason to evict tenants.
Renters will be able to end their tenancy at any point as long as they give at least two months’ notice in writing.
news
The King’s four spiky warnings to Donald Trump
US Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson applaud as Britain’s King Charles III addresses a Joint Meeting of Congress in the House Chamber at the US Capitol on 28 April, 2026 (Photo: Henry Nicholls/POOL)
Caption: Jane Merrick journalist at the i newspaper, on July 30th, 2019, in London, United Kingdom.
Photographer: Micha Theiner
Copyright: ?? 2019 Micha Theiner
The King has issued a poignant appeal to Donald Trump to end the war in Iran and attempted to heal the rift between the US President and Sir Keir Starmer.
Charles said the strength of the relationship between the UK and the US was that it was “born out of dispute but no less strong for it” and that “we can perhaps agree that we do not always agree”.
Peacemaker King
He also made it clear – in the most diplomatic way possible – that he would like to see Trump end the conflict in Iran once and for all.
King Charles delivers a speech to a Joint Meeting of Congress in the House Chamber at the US Capitol (Photo: AFP)
Caption: Britain’s King Charles addresses a joint meeting of Congress, next to U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 28, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper/Pool
Photographer: Kylie Cooper
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Source: REUTERS
The monarch said: “It is why it is my hope – my prayer – that, in these turbulent times, working together and with our international partners, we can stem the beating of ploughshares into swords.”
Starmer-Trump reconciliation
Quoting Starmer, the King said: “Ours is an indispensable partnership. We must not disregard everything that has sustained us for the last 80 years. Instead, we must build on it.”
King Charles III addresses a joint meeting of Congress (Photo: Kylie Cooper/AP)
OPINION
5 min read
Epstein survivors
Charles did not directly refer to Epstein survivors, but he did make a veiled reference.
The monarch said: “In both of our countries, it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives our collective strength, including to support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”
Analysis
4 min read
Analysis
5 min read
Antidote to ‘drill baby drill’?
The King praised the “generations of Americans … indigenous, political and civic leaders, people in rural communities…[who] have all helped to protect and nurture what president Theodore Roosevelt called ‘the glorious heritage’ of this land’s extraordinary natural splendour, on which so much of its prosperity has always depended”.
Caption: Members of Congress applaud as Britain’s King Charles III arrives to speak to a Joint Meeting of Congress in the House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 28, 2026. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images)
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Source: AFP
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Caption: WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 28: Britain’s King Charles III addresses a Joint Meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol during day two of the State Visit of King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the United States of America on April 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. In his first visit to the U.S. as the British monarch, King Charles III is addressing Congress as part of a multi-day trip to the nation’s capital, New York City, and Virginia celebrating the United States of America’s 250th anniversary of its independence. (Photo by Henry Nicholls – Pool via Samir Hussein/WireImage)
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The hotspots where it’s most difficult to sell your home
The average length of time to sell a home is just a day longer than a year ago despite
higher mortgages,
although in London homes are taking nearly a week longer
to be snapped up typically, according to a property website.
Caption: Estate agents ‘for sale’ and ‘let’ signs outside residential properties in Guildford, UK, on Monday, July 28, 2025. The number of UK home loans given the green light rose to a three-month high in June, as the housing market continued to shake off the impact of April’s tax hike.??Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Photographer: Bloomberg
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Source: Bloomberg
Copyright: ? 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP
A closer look at the figures
33 days
Across the UK, the average time to sell a home is 33 days, just one day longer than last year.
6 days
The London area stands out as being particularly affected by recent events, with the average home there taking six days longer to sell than a year ago, the report found.
The locations on the list of hotspots
Here is how long on average it takes to sell a home, according to Zoopla analysis of the seven weeks to 17 April, 2025 and the seven weeks to 17 April, 2026:
Scotland – 15, 15
North East – 28, 28
Yorkshire and the Humber – 31, 31
North West – 28, 31
Wales – 34, 34
West Midlands – 33, 34
South West – 36, 35
East Midlands – 37, 37
East of England – 35, 38
South East – 37, 39
London – 35, 41
Caption: LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 30: People lok at houses for sale in an estate agents window in Mayfair on October 30, 2025 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by John Keeble/Getty Images)
Photographer: John Keeble
Provider: Getty Images
Source: Getty Images Europe
Copyright: 2025 John Keeble
What do experts say?
Mortgage rates are drifting lower and there is greater choice of homes for sale
The best-value homes are moving quickly, particularly in northern cities and Scotland, whereas the room for negotiation is greater across southern regions,” Richard Donnell, executive director of Zoopla said.
Labour took control of Birmingham City Council in 2012, but its 14-year hold on the UK’s largest local authority could come to an end when voters head to the polls on 7 May.
Since Labour was last elected five years ago, the council has declared bankruptcy, raised council taxes by 24 per cent over three years, and overseen a 16-month long bin strike that led to giant rats roaming the streets.
Muhammad Ismael migrated from Pakistan (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
On Monday, the Labour administration said it had the framework of a deal that could end the strike and would move ahead with it if it is still in power after the election. Opposition parties called it an “election stunt” and accused Labour of playing “political games”.
Dire polls for Labour
Polls indicate Labour will lose control of Birmingham City Council, with support surging for rivals including Reform UK, the Green Party and independents. No party is likely to win the 51 seats needed for a majority, raising the prospect of potential coalitions and fragmented leadership.
Pollcheck, a polling analyst, expects Labour’s seats to plunge from 65 to 10, leaving the Conservatives as the biggest party with 23 seats. Reform would come in second with 20 seats, followed by independents (19), the Greens (16) and Lib Dems (13).
A poll by More in Common and ITV News expects Labour’s seats to halve to 32, with Reform in second place at 26, and the Conservatives on 25. The Lib Dems are forecast to win 10 seats, the Greens 7 and independents 1, the survey found.
Rats and potholes ‘everywhere’
Labour’s political rivals in the city believe a catalogue of failures is leaving the door open for them to take power.
Roger Harmer, leader of the Lib Dems in Birmingham, said there is disappointment with Labour both at a national and local level.
“In Birmingham, it’s focused on a council that has failed demonstrably, that has seen the city turned into one of the dirtiest in the country,” he said. “It won awards as the cleanest city in the UK in 2007 and now it’s at the other end of the extreme.
“[The council] has put people’s council tax up because they went bankrupt, it still doesn’t have a functioning IT system – all these things combined mean that people are just fed up with them.”
Roger Harmer is the leader of the Lib Dems in Birmingham and has confirmed there with Labour (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Matt Bennett, a Conservative councillor, said the local authority “completely mishandled” equal pay claims that were brought by female staff who said they were not able to earn the same as male colleagues and have cost taxpayers up to £760m. A new council IT system has cost about £144m – more than seven times earlier estimates.
“They’ve wasted money, and as a result, they’ve had to go back to hard-working Brummies and ask for more money in council tax,” Bennett said. “People are angry about that.”
Bennett said it’s “beggars belief” that the bin strike has still not been resolved. “We still have piles of rubbish in the streets, we still have rats everywhere, and we don’t have a recycling service,” he said.
Uncollected rubbish pictured last year during the strike (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Julien Pritchard, leader of the Green councillors, said waste collections have been “hit and miss”, with poorer areas worst affected by “patchy” services. A lack of bulky waste collections means people can’t get rid of bigger items, which has fuelled a rise in fly-tipping, he added.
‘Labour have let people down’
Poppy Bunn, 19, said she plans to vote Green, because the party is “for the people”. She said her area used to support Labour but the Green Party has gained traction because a lot of people have been “let down”.
“On a lot of the streets, there’s rats and foxes that have torn apart a lot of rubbish,” she said. “In the area that I live, there’s people who can’t access the tips themselves to take their own rubbish away, so they have to live with filth all around them.”
Bunn, an actor, said “it’s become a privilege to have a basic quality of life now, which is not what Labour said they had stood for”.
Poppy Bunn says she will vote Green in the upcoming election (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Shafaq Hussain, chair of the End the Bin Strike campaign group and a Your Party candidate, said people with respiratory issues and asthma “couldn’t breathe” because of “mountains” of rubbish stacked outside their homes. Fly-tipping has blighted local parks, he added.
He recalls a 67-year-old disabled woman contacting him about mice “chewing away her wardrobes every night”, saying she couldn’t sleep.
The number of fly-tipping reports almost doubled in the months after strikes began last January, with the council saying it handed out more than 2,000 fixed penalty notices in the year to October 2025.
Fly-tipping is a big local issue with one woman complaining of rats nibbling at her wardrobe (Photo: Andrew Fox/The i Paper)
Swathes of disillusioned voters appear to be turning away from Labour, with a number saying they are leaning towards Reform.
Emma, 45, said she would like to vote for Restore Britain – the party launched by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe in February – but, since they aren’t fielding any candidates yet, she thinks she will have to settle for Reform.
Emma, a hairdresser, said she has nothing against legal migration, but believes illegal migration is “pushing all the resources locally”, including hospitals, “to the brink”. “That’s pushing people’s taxes up, because we’re having to pay for everybody coming into the country,” she said.
She said there are “rats everywhere” but does not know if choosing any particular party would resolve the bin strike.
Raj Brahmbhatt, a 24-year-old student, said he plans to vote Reform and supports changes to the immigration system. “The good people – the people who are contributing – need to come here, but not the other way round,” he said.
Raj Brahmbhatt supports Reform’s immigration changes (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Critics say Reform is campaigning on national issues like immigration that have little to do with what councillors can achieve at a local level. Many Reform candidates in Birmingham appear to be “paper” candidates – meaning they are not doing any campaigning.
The i Paper researched all of Reform’s candidates in Birmingham and found no record of campaigning activity by at least two-thirds of them.
Reform was the only party to refuse requests by The i Paper for an interview with any of their candidates in Birmingham. However, a party source claimed candidates have knocked on more than 39,000 doors since the campaign began and hand-delivered more than 350,000 leaflets and letters.
Rat infestations have grown in the city (Photo: Will Timms)
Paul Smith, an independent candidate who previously spent months campaigning for Reform, said the party doesn’t want any councillors going “rogue” and causing problems.
“They feel that if they put a Reform rosette on a donkey, they’ll get them through,” he said. “And that’s evident in a lot of wards… because the data says they’ve got a very good chance.”
“Look at their literature: it’s all about Nigel Farage, it’s all about the wider party,” he added.
Paul Smith (left) being interviewed by The i Paper (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Swathes of independent candidates
Smith said independents like him are a mix of community activists, people sidelined by the major parties, and Palestinian supporters who disagree with Labour’s policy on Gaza.
Lawyer Akhmed Yakoob has formed an electoral pact with George Galloway’s Workers Party to field about 70 prospective councillors across the city under the Independent Candidates Alliance. At the 2024 general election, Yakoob came close to beating Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in the Birmingham Ladywood seat, campaigning primarily against Labour’s stance on Gaza.
Your Party, founded by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has five candidates and is backing a long list of independents.
Council leader accepts strikes ‘frustrating’
Along with many voters who spoke to The i Paper, Ian Rogers, 64, said there have been too many “broken promises” from Labour.
“Pretty much everything that they said they were going to do they haven’t done,” he said. “The whole green agenda seems to have been forgotten all about – that’s the main thing for me, really.”
Rogers, a lecturer, said he is likely to vote Green, believing the party has “good ideas”, and are “forward looking”.
Ian Rogers believes in Green’s ideas and will be voting for them this election (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Labour’s council leader, John Cotton, blamed its troubles on a lack of funding from the previous Conservative central government and the previous Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s failure to resolve equal pay issues at a local level.
“There was a wider context of austerity that ripped the guts out of local governments up and down the country,” he said. “Councils like Birmingham – big metropolitan areas – were unfairly funded at the expense of other places. In Birmingham’s case, that cost us £1bn.”
He said the waste dispute has been “very frustrating” but the council needed to “modernise” the service and make sure an agreement did not create further equal pay issues. Cotton said council tax rises above the usual 4.99 per cent cap will not be needed again.
John Cotton says ‘councils are unfairly funded’ (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Gurdial Singh Atwal, a Labour councillor, admitted the party has made mistakes and said it will probably lose control of the council.
Atwal is keen to steer the conversation away from the party, saying he is “proud” of the work he has done locally. Councillors like him may well scrape by in areas where support for Labour remains high.
Madeline Hempstead speaks of the inconvenience of the bin strikes (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)
Madeline Hempstead, a 28-year-old who is unemployed, said the bin strike has been “inconvenient” but she is still likely to vote Labour, believing the party’s views are closest to her own.
“I am not happy with anyone,” she said. “I am voting for the lesser of all the evils.”
Video production by Scarlett Milburn-Smith, Ed Campbell and Cormac O’Brien