Coventry bin strikes: Recycling collections expected to restart

Recycling collections are set to restart next week in Coventry despite ongoing strikes by bin workers.

An all-out strike has been staged in the city since 31 January by about 75 bin lorry drivers in a stand-off with the council over pay.

Residents currently only have household waste collected every two weeks.

Garden waste collections should also restart from the middle of April, the council's director of street scene said.

Andrew Walster said the local authority was still finalising details on both schemes and expected to have a "couple of weeks of bedding in" with the recycling collections.

"Obviously people will have used some of those bins for storage and what have you, we will need to work through that over the next two or three weeks," he said.

During the strike, the council has relied on Tom White Waste to provide collections, a private contractor wholly owned by the local authority.

Temporary drop-off sites have also been set up by the Labour-run council.

The bin strikes are set to continue into the summer after a vote which saw 94% of drivers who took part support renewing a mandate for action, union Unite said.

The dispute has lasted for several months and has turned increasingly bitter as both council and union criticise each other's claims about drivers' pay.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham blamed "incompetence and a catalogue of failures" by the authority for the continuing strikes.

But the council accused the union of publishing "blatant inaccuracies" following the vote and said a request for a pay increase had gone through independent arbitration service Acas - a process previously accepted by Unite.

Mr Walster said the council was "getting close to that point" of exhausting negotiations with the union, a view that attracted strong criticism from Unite.

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