00:00Well I've come to Mayor Green to simply ask the question to Keith here who is
00:04from Sutton Coalfield. Are you happy with Birmingham City Council's service
00:09provision and do you think it's perhaps time for a change?
00:12Hi Nick, yes I think it is. We've had the Labour government running things in
00:19Birmingham, a lot of things going wrong notwithstanding the strike with the bin
00:25men. You know when you're running a business you've got to know how to run a
00:29business and clearly that is one of the bigger businesses in Europe, the Birmingham
00:34City Council Conurbation and I think it's about time that we had proper
00:38professionals running businesses like this, not just people who are putting
00:45roles that they have no understanding of how to run. I'm joined by Janet now, thank
00:50you for your time. The question is about Birmingham City Council, it's currently
00:54run by Labour, they've been in power for 20 years now, are you happy with the
00:58service they provide and is it perhaps time for a change? Definitely, I used to
01:04live in Sully Horta four years ago so I have noticed a difference coming here. And
01:10what difference is that? Just higher council tax for start and services not not very
01:18good. Well we are going to see soon a cut back on the bin collections to fortnight. Oh yeah the
01:24bin collection, don't get them started. Definitely time for a change, absolutely
01:30can't believe how bad they've been. Shocking, shocking on the taxi furs of the
01:37school. For children's school, for the overspend on IT. Yeah. The, what are the things, the bins
01:49obviously. The bins obviously, yeah. And also the salary. The library closures. The legal thing
01:55about all those, the equal pay. The equal pay. It's just bankrupt to the council. But I mean it's almost not like
02:02party political really, to me. It's just that you've got a huge bureaucracy here that doesn't
02:08really know how to transform itself into something that's really fantastic value for money for residents.
02:14They just don't know how to do it. It's just all about keeping the, you know, the wheels on the track
02:19and just chugging along as normal. Everything's going to be fine. And yet we expect more for our
02:24council tax. And we're nowhere near where we need to be. The council themselves say the financial crisis
02:30was caused by a combination of historic equal pay liabilities, the cost of living, a failed IT system
02:37and years of pressure on local government funding. It says it's now operating a government supervised
02:43recovery plan to stabilise the finances and protect essential services. On the bin strike, the council says
02:50it's made an offer but can't go further within its budgets. While the union unites, says the council
02:56should do more to end the dispute.
Comments