Green waste furore fails to make election impact

The Labour Party has managed to maintain its majority in the Birmingham city council elections, despite fierce opposition over the ‘mishandling’ of green waste collections across the city.

Birminghams Labour-run council received flak for its introduction of an opt-in 35 charge for green waste collections, dubbed the garden tax, which became a key campaign issue for Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates in the run-up to the elections last week (May 22).

Opposition members had long-attacked the charge, arguing that it would lead to an increase in flytipping and overburden household recycling centres (see letsrecycle.com story).

The issue came to a head just days before residents went to the polls, when the council admitted it had reached a tipping point over the amount of green waste dumped on the city streets, and was forced to roll out extra collection services to clear-up the bags regardless of whether residents had paid (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, the election results show that while Labour did lose six seats to the Conservatives, it performed strongly overall and finished with 77 seats compared to totals of 31 and 12 from the Conservatives and Lib Dems respectively.

Disillusion

The result throws into question whether the garden tax was the decisive issue it was billed as in the run up to the polls, though Conservative councillor for Edgbaston Ward, Deidre Alden, argued residents were no less disillusioned with how the council had handled collections of green waste.

She said: “The Conservatives did well in Birmingham – we made two gains from Labour including taking the seat off a Labour cabinet member. We also held four seats which we lost to Labour last year. This was all helped by Labour’s mishandling of the green collections which angered the electorate. Including the outrageous timing of the clean-up.”

But speaking to letsrecycle.com, Neil Elkes, local government correspondent for the Birmingham Mail, suggested national issues and loyalties played a larger role in deciding the result.

He said: “Garden tax may have been a factor in some marginal areas – Labour failed to take marginal seats in Yardley and Northfield areas which they took in 2012. In Yardley, Lib Dems defended seats with a campaign focused heavily on the garden tax.”

Also, in Labour’s core inner city areas it is not an issue as areas are densely populated with tower blocks, and narrow terraces often with yards and drives replacing gardens. I think you would get a different answer from suburban Labour candidates than you would from inner city ones.

Legal action

Lib Dem MP John Hemming who campaigned hard to help his Party secure the four Yardley seats despite finishing with three losses in total pledged to continue his campaign against the garden waste tax with a court hearing into the Labour policy due to take place on June 11.

He said: “The legal action will be heard in the courts in late June and I am already building up evidence for a second legal action.”