West Midlands and Chilterns Rail Route Consultation

If you want to have your say on this important rail route, you have until the end of the week. More details here:

http://is.gd/ItdxT2

Refuse and Recycling Collection in Birmingham - Update 2

• Tomorrow's and Friday's half-day strikes have been called off.
• The work-to-rule by the regular crews is also off for the time being.
• The Council will continue to deploy the casual crews as well as the regular crews to clear any backlog.
• Further talks are scheduled for Tuesday.

If there's any more news, I'll let you know.

Refuse and Recycling Collection in Birmingham - Update 1

Despite the snow in mid-December, the trade unions decided to press on with their strike on Monday 20th and they’ve been working four day weeks and refusing overtime since.

To compensate, we’ve recruited a casual workforce, working seven days a week, to pick up the work that the unions are leaving behind. Over the last weekend, this workforce of over 200 members of staff in 70 vehicles collected 1,410 tonnes of refuse in 282,000 black bags.

We’ve also continued to extend the opening hours at the City's five household recycling centres to 8am to 9pm, seven days a week.

The latest advice from Cllr Huxtable, who's the Cabinet Member responsible, is to put out fresh waste only on your scheduled collection day.

The unions are determined to inflict as much disruption as possible on the ordinary people of Birmingham and no-one in the Labour leadership, locally or nationally, has come out and condemned their actions. However, I’m determined that Labour and the unions won’t take Birmingham back to the 1970s.