Rats feasting on rubbish lead to health warnings in Britain's second city

By Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - Rats feasting on mounds of rotting rubbish during a refuse collection strike in Britain's second-biggest city have led to warnings of a public health crisis, with no end in sight to the long-running dispute.

Birmingham City Council declared a major incident last month after it clashed with the Unite union over jobs, pay and conditions, prompting refuse workers to go on strike.

Unite is a longtime ally of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party, which holds the majority on the city council, but it has become increasingly critical of government recently.

Starmer's tough stance on the strike has led to a war of words with Unite, one of Britain's biggest unions, and the standoff has led to piles of black bin bags building up on roadsides throughout the city, with some residents dumping mattresses and furniture on top.

Social media and news reports have been dominated by talk of large rats eating through the rubbish or long queues of traffic as households take their waste to collection sites. Health secretary Wes Streeting said this week he was concerned about the public health situation.

One resident dressed as a giant rat attended a public meeting on Tuesday to joke that local politicians were helping feed their "rodent" family.

"We can go around and rampage in the streets - it's great," the resident told the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a scheme funded by the BBC to help local news outlets employ journalists.

The council has been forced to find cuts in local spending after it was effectively declared bankrupt in 2023 over its liabilities relating to historic equal pay claims.

Unite says the council removed a job level which it argues will force some of its workers to take a huge pay cut.

The council says it has made a fair offer and no workers should lose any money. It has accused picketing workers of blocking rubbish trucks from leaving depots. By March 31, it said around 17,000 tonnes of waste was uncollected.

The crisis has particularly hit some parts of the city.

Clive Chapman, 49, in Balsall Heath, said few people in his inner city area had access to their own transport to remove rubbish, meaning large rubbish containers were overflowing.

"We're in a part of the city that's been totally neglected," he said. "It's not very good."

The government says it has urged the two sides to find a solution, with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner telling parliament on Monday it was trying to end the "misery".

(Reporting by Kate Holton, editing by Elizabeth Piper and Hugh Lawson)