Cliff Notes
- Residents in Highgate, Birmingham, are dealing with an overwhelming stench due to bin strikes causing overflowing rubbish bins, attracting pests like rats and foxes.
- Local inhabitants express sympathy for striking bin workers, acknowledging the difficulty of their job while demanding immediate action to resolve the sanitation crisis.
- The community is taking matters into their own hands, with some making trips to rubbish tips as they await a resolution in the ongoing pay dispute between the council and bin workers’ union.
‘It’s just nasty’: Birmingham residents ‘overwhelmed’ by foul stench and massive rats as bins strike rumbles on | UK News
In parts of Birmingham, the stench is overwhelming – enough to make you heave.
At a block of flats in Highgate, in Birmingham city centre, we find a mountain of bin liners full of rubbish spewing out of the cavernous bin store, which is normally locked.
Mickel comes out to speak to us, while all around bin liners lie open, with the contents for all to see, including used nappies and rotting food.
We both find it hard to keep talking amid the awful smell.
“We’ve had foxes and rats, literally the size of cats, flies, it’s just nasty, something needs to be done,” he says.
Around the corner, I meet Chris, in her dressing gown, popping the bins into her bin store beneath her flat before work.
She unlocks it, and although it isn’t bursting out on to the street yet, it is getting full.
She says the situation is “overwhelming” as she’s “terrified of rats”. But, even so, she has sympathy for the striking bin workers.
“It’s not an easy job; they must have a heart of gold to do that job,” she says.
“Pay them whatever they need, they deserve it.”
At Lifford Lane tip, south of the city centre, Brigette has pulled up alongside picketing workers. The back seat of her car is full of rubbish.
She apologises for the terrible waft, mixed with air freshener.
“It’s very pungent, isn’t it? Not nice,” she admits.
“It’s unfortunate, I have some sympathies for all the parties, but, equally, we have a duty of care to stay clean and tidy.”
She says she has her rubbish and that of her elderly aunt and plans to make weekly trips to the tip until a resolution in this pay dispute between the council and the Unite union is found.