Pressure is now mounting on the council’s Labour leadership to sort out the debacle of the green waste charging once and for all.
Piles of fly-tipped bags left by lampposts for weeks on end are doing nothing to enhance the image and reputation of the city and increasing numbers of people have drawn the conclusion that the council is woefully incompetent.
Among them are several Labour MPs whose constituents have been grumbling about the state of streets and the fact they now have to pay £35 a year for a service that was previously free.
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Northfield MP Richard Burden , Steve McCabe in Selly Oak and Liam Byrne in Hodge Hill have, behind the scenes, all made it clear they do not want to see more piles of rubbish strewn around the streets next spring in the midst of the 2015 general election campaign.
‘Garden tax’ was a key issue in the May local elections which saw the Tories in Birmingham make modest gains against national trends – the Lib Dems also held on in places they had previously lost to Labour.
There is also growing unease among Labour backbenchers in the inner-cities who claim their areas, including Bordesley Green, Washwood Heath, Sparkbrook and Sparkhill, are getting worse.
People in these areas either refuse or cannot afford to pay and don’t have the means to deal with their grass cuttings themselves.
Of course one bag left by a roadside quickly becomes a dozen as more get added.
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Piles in Little Bromwich Road, Bordesley Green were six feet high.
Councillors are grumbling that being safe Labour seats they were left off the widespread pre-election clean-up in May up.
Officials vehemently denied this was a result of political interference – they were just swamped they said and could not get round every street.
A scrutiny committee inquiry into the debacle has been told to look only at improving the service and keeping the streets clean.
The committee’s first hearing this week was dominated by a two-hour bitching session as backbenchers talked about missed collections, the failure to clear the fly-tipping, recycling rates and even new wagons tipping bins in with the grass cuttings.
Service director Tommy Wallace and assistant director Matt Kelly hit back with a string of facts and figures: 47,000 people have paid for green waste collections, 99 per cent of collections are on time, there were 79 complaints last week (down from a peak of 200 per week in the spring), queues at tips are falling and recycling rates have not been unduly impacted.
Bizarrely, Mr Kelly said that when there were universal collections there was even more rubbish on the streets on a daily basis – but of course that was generally picked up on the same day, not left to fester.
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He also pointed out that inner city areas have long-standing rubbish problems – 14 per cent of fly-tipping takes place in Sparkbrook.
It also emerged the council had received about £1.4 million in payments, which, with the cut in vehicle and staff costs, leads to the £2.5 million budget saving.
They also said that 30 per cent of local authorities now charge for green waste and the number is rising. Committee chairman Majid Mahmood said he was very familiar with Sheffield, where residents pay £52, and there were no issues there. What is concerning is that Birmingham is almost unique in having a major issue with green waste charging.
The only conclusion is that the whole thing has been handled very badly.
Already the cabinet member responsible for its introduction, James McKay, has been moved to other duties. His successor Lisa Trickett has come in with a pledge to get the problems ironed out – better IT mapping systems in dust carts may sort out the missed collections.
Further confusion exists because the council is part way through the two-year roll out of wheelie bins for general waste and recycling. This is a waste management department awarded £30 million Government funding two years ago for a million new wheelie bins, a fleet of 135 new dustcarts and upgrades to depots.
Messers Wallace and Kelly admitted that things might have run smoother had they withdrawn the universal green waste collections gradually over the same time scale instead of implementing the policy city wide in February this year. But it was clear that budget demands meant it had to be done sooner rather than later.
A gradual policy introduction would have seen teething problems dealt with before they hit too many households and given time for alternatives like compost bins to be properly promoted and discounted, discounts offered to the elderly and unemployed and so on.
With a budget saving of £2.5 million a year in the bag, it is argued the leadership will not go back to a universal collection paid from general tax. However, there is this growing pressure calling for precisely that, even if only on an area by area basis. With a general election looming, who is going to bet against the angry MPs and backbenchers getting their way?
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Congratulations to council leader Sir Albert Bore and Councillor Victoria Quinn who tied the knot this week.
The Labour leader has kept their honeymoon details a closely guarded secret prompting much speculation. My money is on a committee meeting in Brussels.