Along Birmingham’s city centre streets, 6ft-high piles of bin bags drape onto the pavements. A thick musk of rapidly decomposing food waste coats the air – the stench increased by the warming early-spring sunshine.
The feet of the black bag mountains have been nibbled away by an ever-expanding population of rats, which residents claim are growing to the size of cats.
“I bet if you give that a good kick now, they’ll come scurrying out,” says Martin Curry, one of the dozens of pest control experts called upon by the city’s residents to help expel the ever-growing population of unwanted guests.
He wields a large stick found on the ground which he uses to poke at the rubbish mound, hoping to entice one of the rodents out. No luck this time. But even if you can’t see the rats, traces of their presence are everywhere.
“Look at that. Their teeth marks are all over that. Definitely rats,” Martin says, pointing to a gnawed-at wheelie bin lid and a dirty nappy dragged out from the inner bin bag lining. “They’ll happily eat that,” he adds, referencing the baby poo.
Nine weeks into the bin strikes that have ravaged the city, the towers of rubbish appear unlikely to be cleared any time soon. Unions on Thursday said indefinite industrial action would remain in place after failing to make a breakthrough in talks with Birmingham City Council.
The roots of the strike are complex. Unions argue the Labour-controlled council’s plan to scrap the role of grade three waste recycling and collection officers – the bin workers who oversee the safety of the back of the bin lorry – would put members at risk.
Some of the workers would also see a substantial pay cut as they move down to a grade two position.
Martin Curry runs his own firm, MC Environmental Pest Control (Photo: The i Paper)Nine weeks into the bin strikes that have ravaged the city, the towers of rubbish appear unlikely to be cleared any time soon (Photo: The i Paper)Negotiations between unions and the council – currently being overseen by a Government commission after it was effectively declared bankrupt in December – then soured further this week after Unite claimed the council sacked three drafted-in agency workers for speaking to strikers.
The union claimed it was part of a plan to directly replace employed staff with an “insecure agency workforce”. The council denies the claim and that it made the sackings.
With no refuse collection coming soon, the council urged residents to leave rubbish out as normal. They said enough agency staff had been called in to maintain collections.
While this has been the case for some areas, other residents said it had been “weeks” since they had seen a lorry, leaving them “no choice but to fly tip”.
Martin, who runs his own firm MC Environmental Pest Control, says he has been “inundated” with work because of the bin strikes.
“I had a lady who had been keeping black bags in her kitchen because she had nowhere to put them,” he says. “She had mice in her house and they were chewing through the black bags.”
“The thing is you pay your council tax as well so something needs to be done about it.”
In Small Heath Park, a mile from Birmingham’s city centre, a small boy scoots alongside his mother, weaving in and out of the refuse piles. Black bag upon black bag sits outside each home overlooking the green.
The most faded and oldest-looking bags were once placed neatly alongside the full wheelie bins. As despondency has grown and collection looks ever unlikely, the most recent bags appear to have been chucked vagrantly near the growing pile.
“This is all rat teeth marks,” Martin says, pointing to more rodent activity on the polyethylene bins. “Their teeth are constantly growing so they have to constantly chew to file them down.
“I’ve been to places before where they’ve basically chewed half the bin lid off,” he adds, with an evident fascination within heard in his voice, despite his own disgust at Birmingham’s infestations.
But for pet control firms such as Martin’s, they are unable to do much about the unwanted inhabitants in public areas because of regulations around the poisons they’re allowed to use.
“Although we’d use tethered bait stations, there’s always a risk of someone getting into contact with it,” he explains.
“If a rat was to pull away any bait out of there – which look like sweets – and it’s left on the roadside and a child picks one of them up and sticks it in its mouth, I’m liable. Or a cat – the last thing you want to do is kill somebody’s cat.”
Martin says he has been ‘inundated’ with work because of the bin strikes (Photo: The i Paper)Residents claim rats are growing to the size of cats in Birmingham as the strike continues (Photo: The i Paper)Martin jokes of his work: “It’s not as glamorous as you think, is it?” It’s also not as violent as one might think. Laws are strict around the types of trappings that can be used, to both prevent suffering for the rat and to prevent other non-invasive animals or humans from being caught.
Dispatching pests and collections are only allowed when made “as humane as possible and in one quick blow”.
“It’s few and far between,” Martin explains. “I had a job a few months ago and I went up to the loft and it was absolutely riddled with droppings. And while I was up there she popped her head up the loft and she’s gone ‘there it is by your boot’ and I look down and there’s a rat cowering down next to me.
“I tried to stay as still as I possibly could and took a little truncheon from my bag and gave it a little whack on the back of the head.”
Driving through the city’s inner suburbs, to Martin’s first official job of the morning, stacks of bin bags remain as frequent as parked cars. Every house appears to have its own pile. Houses known to be empty are targeted by neighbours, stacking their trash outside the unused front door.
Martin pulls his van over again, this time to a fly-tipping site where locals have been dumping rubbish.
“It’s not normally like this,” he groans, apologising for the current state of the city in which he was born and raised. “There’s just debris everywhere.”
He suspects the situation would not have been allowed to happen if the dispute was taking place in London instead. “Keir Starmer wouldn’t have it outside his front door,” he suggests
Litter is scattered on green patches of roadside approaching a crossing for the River Cole, just outside Yardley. Shopping bags, stuffed bin liners, fast food packaging and the remains of a discarded wardrobe sit on the bank. A malodorous smell still permeates the outside air.
We later come across a dead rat – the closest we will get to spotting one of the live rodents infesting the city.
It lays splayed out, squashed behind a car, but evidently killed long before the vehicle parked up. Martin is impressively nonchalant by the display of its innards strewn across the road.
“More bin bags there,” he points out, driving onwards. “They’ll have rats there, I bet. You always have issues with those bin sheds,” he points out again.
“It makes me sad, especially down here because this is where I grew up. I moved out a long time ago now and I drive past now and it’s so rundown. It’s never like it was.”
Martin introduces Jimmy Doris, an Irishman now living in Birmingham and working for one of the firms he provides with pest control services.
“People have no option but to fly tip,” Jimmy suggests. “You see it on your travels. It’s very sad. It’s not helping the environment.
“And people are just chucking stuff on the ground instead of the bin, so I think we [Birmingham residents] are as much to blame as the council.”
A council lorry had been dispatched to south Birmingham on Wednesday morning, allowing residents to discard their household waste. But the situation descended into chaos as the lorry filled, with fights breaking out and frustrated residents, wheelie bins in toe, dumping their rubbish onto the street.
For months, household rubbish, fly-tipping and bulky waste have been building up across the city (Photo: The i Paper)From April, Birmingham residents will start to have waste collections reduced from weekly to fortnightly (Photo: The i Paper)Police were called to the scene and shut the area down due to safety concerns. Those who had queued hoping to finally get rid of their rubbish were warned they would be fined if they left anything behind.
Driving back towards the city again before we part, Martin points out by far the biggest rubbish pile seen so far. “Look at that,” he says, in both awe and disgust.
Again he rummages around the stack, pointing out mice and rat droppings as well as teeth marks.
Aleesha Mohammed, 39, stands outside her house, glancing across at the 6-ft tall pile of rubbish, we have just inspected, that has amassed among her neighbours. “It’s really bad. I’ve never seen it like this. We just put our rubbish there. There’s nothing else we can really do.
“There’s just fly tipping everywhere, and furniture dumped,” she said, explaining that she had heard nothing from the council about when a collection would be made. “That pile is just going to keep building.”
Aleesha said she was thankful not to have come across any rats but said she was worried she may face a rodent sooner rather than later. Martin, meanwhile, resits giving out his card in case those fears do become realised.
In a statement, Birmingham City Council said: “This escalation of industrial action will mean greater disruption to residents – despite the fair and reasonable offer that the council made to Unite the Union.”
It added that “the small number of workers” whose wages are impacted changes to the waste service have been offered alternative jobs.
Councillor Robert Alden, leader of the Conservative Group, said Birmingham had been “blighted by almost 800 days of bin disputes in the last eight years because of Labour’s complete failure to resolve equal pay“.
He added: “The impact of their latest failure has left Birmingham residents with a double whammy, paying more in council tax while seeing their streets overrun with rubbish and rats.”
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