{"id":45111,"date":"2025-04-23T23:34:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/45111\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:34:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:34:14","slug":"council-wasted-53m-on-consultants-ahead-of-city-crippling-bin-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/45111\/","title":{"rendered":"council ‘wasted’ \u00a353m on consultants ahead of city-crippling bin strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birmingham City Council has \u201cwasted\u201d over \u00a353million on consultants prior to the city-wide bin strike<\/a> which has just entered its seventh week.<\/p>\n

The industrial action which is being carried out by the Unite union, has left 21,000 tonnes of rubbish piling up across England’s second city.<\/p>\n

SIGN OUR PETITION: CALLING FOR HARSHER PUNISHMENT FOR THOSE THAT TRASH OUR COUNTRY<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Birmingham<\/p>\n

The dispute in Birmingham began after the council removed the role of waste recycling and collection officer<\/p>\n

Getty\"Bins<\/p>\n

The impact on Birmingham residents has been severe, with reports of rats ‘as big as cats’ feasting on uncollected rubbish<\/p>\n

PA<\/p>\n

The local authority is now coming under fire after new data has revealed that it spent \u00a353.6million on external consultants between 2020-21 and 2023-24.<\/p>\n

Figures from Conservative analysis of data has shown that the council, which declared itself bankrupt in 2023, spent \u00a317.5million on external consultants in 2020-21.<\/p>\n

From 2021-22, this increased to \u00a317.6million, before dropping to \u00a310.4million in the same period the following year.<\/p>\n

It spent \u00a38million in 2023-24, during which it declared itself effectively bankrupt by issuing a Section 114 notice, meaning it couldn’t balance its budget without external help.<\/p>\n

STOP TRASHING BRITAIN:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kevin Hollinrake, the Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary, said: \u201cThis is yet another example of Labour\u2019s endless waste of taxpayers\u2019 cash.<\/p>\n

\u201cRat-infested rubbish piles high on Labour\u2019s watch in Birmingham, yet the council\u2019s priority is to fritter away millions of pounds to external consultants, only to see the council still continue to fail residents over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, bin workers rejected the Labour-led council’s latest pay offer<\/a> by an overwhelming majority, with fresh talks ending without agreement.<\/p>\n

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner had urged Unite to accept a \u201csignificantly improved offer\u201d to end the month-long crisis, which has seen rats running through mountains of bin bags.<\/p>\n

\"Birmingham<\/p>\n

Over 21,000 tonnes of rubbish has gone uncollected in England’s second city<\/p>\n

PA<\/p>\n

The dispute was triggered by the council’s decision to remove waste recycling and collection officers from its fleets, which the union says would lead to affected workers losing \u00a38,000 in salary.<\/p>\n

John Cotton, the leader of Birmingham city council, has said a deal should be acceptable to the unions and \u201cno one needs to be losing income\u201d as a result.<\/p>\n

However, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham, disputed his claims. She said: \u201cHow can anyone be asked to lose a quarter of pay? These workers have mortgages, rent and food bills to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials maintain that the ultimate solution remains for Unite to accept the council’s offer and end the strike.<\/p>\n

Sign our petition to stop the litter blight across our United Kingdom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City Council has \u201cwasted\u201d over \u00a353million on consultants prior to the city-wide bin strike which has just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,12,16,1259,15,7858],"class_list":{"0":"post-45111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-uk-news","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-west-midlands"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114389900982200010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}