A minority of workers have resorted to “gangsterism not trade unionism” by disrupting rubbish and recycling collections across Brighton and Hove.
Council leader Bella Sankey pulled no punches in an update on historic problems and recent issues at Cityclean – now renamed environmental services.
She said that there had been a return to “bully-boy” tactics and a doubling of missed collections.
At a cabinet meeting Councillor Sankey said that work was under way to tackle the missed rubbish, recycling and garden waste collections which are below Brighton and Hove City Council’s expectations for the service.
Matters improved after an independent report by barrister Aileen McColgan, she said, but had deteriorated again in recent months.
At the cabinet meeting on Thursday (15 May), Councillor Sankey said: “Over the plast 18 months we have seen direct sabotage of vehicles, threats to life, intimidation and the same bully-boy tactics.
“Last year before a particularly bad period of disruption, the GMB Sussex Twitter account warned of ‘chaos’ coming to Brighton directly before we saw further deliberate defecting of vehicles.
“While this tweet was hastily deleted after it was reported to police, we’ve never had any explanation from the GMB branch of what kind of chaos exactly?
“Was it the sort of chaos that compromises workers safety – the very opposite of what any law-abiding and decent trade union branch is supposed to do? If so, that is gangsterism and not trade unionism.
“The list of criminal or unacceptable behaviour is long. Last summer, a depot manager’s car tyres were slashed along with sickening direct threats to their life and the lives of their family members.
“My promise to fellow councillors, colleagues and residents – and, indeed, those who still seem determined to undermine our service – is simple. We will not bow down or buckle in the face of such appalling behaviour.
“Each act of sabotage or intentional disruption to our service just makes us more determined to stamp it out.”
Councillor Sankey added: “I know how hard so many of our colleagues in environmental services are working to turn things around.”
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for net zero and the environment, told the cabinet that he was at the Hollingdean depot every week and went out with a different crew at 4am once a month.
In the months after the investigation became public in 2023, collection rates improved. But in the first quarter of this year, missed collections more than doubled to a three-monthly average of 1,369 from 573 in the final quarter of last year.
Outside the meeting, Councillor Rowkins said: “When you look at the trends and the data of missed collections, they reduced very dramatically indeed, by about 90 per cent, in the immediate aftermath of publishing the (McColgan) report.
“And they rose again equally dramatically when we started implementing the recommendations from that report.
“That does indicate or at least suggests that deliberate action does have a role to play in the disruption that we’ve seen.”
Some of the problems have been blamed on the fleet of ageing bin lorries. Councillor Rowkins added: “There’s no getting away from the fact the fleet is very old and in need of modernisation.”
Seventeen vehicles are more than 10 years old and 13 others are older than the recommended operational lifespan of seven years.
He said that five 26-tonne bin lorries and five smaller vehicles for use in narrower streets were on the way, having been budgeted for in the council’s capital programme.
Five jetwash vehicles were also on the way to support the street cleaning and graffiti removal teams.
Maybe they have learned that behaviour from the current administration? The thuggery and “gangsterism” is a typical response to management incapability. The issues are that the Council promote idiots to oversee a simple function. They have no clue, have never done the job & are simply out of their depth. It is outrageous that this autocratic leader resorts to such divisive language without comprehending the underlying issues and attempting to sort it. She is fanning the flames for an all out dispute rather than conciliation.
What a load of rubbish. Trying to blame Councillors and Officers for the appalling behaviour of a small group of bullies.
The KC report showed the depth of misogyny, racism and homophobia at City Clean, yet the GMB have never apologised, let alone hold an investigation into how their members were able to behave like thugs.
Sack the lot of them and employ people who actually want to work.
The management are incapable. They have to have simple things repeated to them all the time because they don’t have the mental capacity to write it down. One of the managers that works there was bought in through nepotism. He has no experience in managerial roles and his previous job was as a flight attendant. I don’t believe in discriminating against people’s previous jobs but it shows that the management need to step up their game in order to look after its staff better. It is quite literally their job to make sure their staff is working and doing well. That is what my tax money to the council pays for each month. Instead of this they choose to blast their workers who are normal regular working people such as myself. I find it incredibly childish, spreading rumours and telling fibs. I as a woman have only had the best experience with my bin people. They have never caused me any issues and never have they bullied me or been misogynistic. The council overloads them with work causing them to drop roads often because they cannot organise the rounds properly.
The trucks are all over 15 years old and falling apart and the management is not prioritising the service that is crucial to all of us in Brighton and Hove. Without the constant work of the bin people we would be living in dirt and squaller.
I think we should do our best to support these workers because if we fire them all and hire new folks how long will the streets stay dirty? The council does not have the capacity to pick up all the work without its dedicated staff.
There are also women and openly lgbt people working at the bin depot and they are happy with their jobs and their colleagues.
But the KC also said the following:
“A number of witnesses indicated that there were close links between the Labour administration and GMB reps within the Council and concerns were expressed to me that highly confidential information passed between the administration and GMB reps within the Council. Witnesses also described a high degree of interference from politicians in disciplinary processes at City Clean.”
The KC goes on to describe the impact interference from councillors had on managers’ ability to tackle problems:
“Many witnesses told me that the result of the 2019 dispute was that GMB reps within the Council and/or individuals described to me as being particularly protected by them were regarded as untouchable and that management with responsibility for City Clean felt powerless to manage. I was told that the message which had been conveyed to managers at City Clean by these events was that attempts to subject any such individual to disciplinary action in connection with bullying, harassment, and/or threatening behaviour would result in the departure of the relevant manager rather than the individual.”
I get your point Palmeira Seagull about the key culprits being those bullying and that needs to be addressed, but anyone complicit in allowing it to continue should also be investigated. I thing it’s wrong that Bella keeps ignoring that important point.
With respect, your comment reveals a limited understanding of the situation. You seem eager to defend the Council and its managers—perhaps because you are one of them or closely associated. The truth is that the Council has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for its own mismanagement and is now shifting the blame onto frontline workers to cover up its inability to repair a broken service.
Many of the managerial roles at City Clean have been handed out through connections rather than merit, creating a culture of cronyism and incompetence. It’s not a handful of so-called “thugs” causing the crisis—it’s a lack of effective leadership and accountability at the top.
Dreadful issues at CityClean – yet still I see no commitment from Bella Sankey that she will investigate allegations made about councillors in the 2023 KC report.
Bullying and criminality in these media reports is terrible, but if the KC was right and politicians’ decisions allowed issues to continue for longer than they should in the past, it’s shocking that councillors are still not trying to get to the bottom of that side of things.
Perpetrators of bullying and harassment should be tackled, but if councillors turned a blind eye and their action / inaction allowed things to continue, this should be tackled too.
What a load of rubbish. Have you seen the POS trucks they got to drive? Most are well past their working life and should have been scrapped years ago and then they wonder why they always break and crews sit in the yard waiting if they actually get to do their job. Electric vehicles have been tendered wrong and break more then they work plus they can’t even get more electrical capacity so any new vehicle now will be diesel.
Workshop doesn’t get the hours or the funds to cope with decent repairs and have to submit every claim to be authorized.
Looks like the higher management and council tries to slide the fault to the staff who need to do a service with barely any decent tools
I can’t believe the council would go this far to lie about its hardworking staff when they themselves refuse to provide proper working vehicles for the staff. The current vehicles have doors plastered on with ductape and leaking hydraulic oil regularly. Rather than helping their workers they choose to blame them, other them and call them ‘gangsters’ absolutely abhorrent how people in power treat people who provide the most important services. We should be thankful to all the bin folk for doing their job even though the council REFUSES to provide them basic needs like a working truck.
Why not actually help your staff instead of blasting them in the papers and turning Brighton and Hove citizens against some of the most essential workers. Absolutely disgusting I cannot believe my council speaks about its workers this way. Please just admit you’re wrong and stop spinning lies. These bin workers are normal people with families and loved ones. They just want to get through the day so they can pay rent.
Let’s not mention the manager that was embezzling money from the council and bought a yacht with it. Who’s the real enemy?
I have heard the claim regarding tampering repeating numerous times over the past few years and have yet to see any evidence that this is taking place. However, we continue to see bin rounds being dropped, and more and more aging and ancient trucks at CitiClean being sent out on a round and causing widespread health & safety concerns amongst staff. Will the council be taking responsibility for the poor working conditions and bullying from management at CitiClean or will we continue to be expected to demonise the staff who keep our streets clean despite it all?
Councillor Rowkins doesn’t seem to be aware that missed collection data for 2024 was up on 2023 figures, so it is not correct to imply that it’s just this year when missed collections had shot up. Have copied below info below:
Reported missed collections in 2023 were:
Kerbside refuse – 25,834
Kerbside recycling – 11,558
Garden waste – 4,904
Reported missed collections in 2024 were:
Kerbside refuse – 26,718
Kerbside recycling – 15,077
Garden waste – 5,804
Reported missed collections in 2025 are: abysmal
Despite Councillor Rowkins’ visits to the depot the data suggests missed collections have been getting progressively worse. Perhaps this suggests that, if anything, his weekly visits are having a negative impact.
Why, when this video (posted on the official Brighton and Hove News Youtube) { https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydn_l9bvpxo } has members of the council directly mentioning the old fleet of trucks is a major problem and even seem reluctant to accuse the staff of mishandling their vehicles, we are getting all these articles against the bin workers? We see no input from the GMB union members or the staff themselves and it all just seems like a blame game. I would be grateful to hear from the workers and the council on how this issue can be sorted and how we can do better for our community workers.
For goodness sake, shut it down! It’s been like this for decades
The GMB union needs to be kicked out, ( if only it were that simple,) I admire Bella’s rhetoric, but as she is Labour and probably a member, it doesn’t mean much.
Not sure if she’s a member, but GMB made a £4,200 donation to Labour’s May 2023 election costs and she used their Church Road office for phone canvassing sessions during her by election campaign – something which came out at a council meeting last year she omitted to declare and that she would need “to check with Democratic Services whether as to whether that counts as an election expense.” Not sure whether she ever did check and retrospectively declare it if the advice she received was using a room at the GMB office should be declared.
Labour also had an election coordinator based in the GMB office ahead of the 2023 election. Have no idea whether that was declared either, but again, the information only came out when she was challenged on the accuracy of a statement she made at an earlier meeting, in which she said “I must be clear and for the record, the GMB has contributed nothing to the election of any of any of our Labour Group members”.
Hopefully retrospective declarations were made if using rooms at GMB offices does count as an election expense, and also the GMB donation was declared by councillors, even if when Bella made her statement it was not known by her that the local Labour Party had received it and used it towards councillors’ election campaign.
Why is Cllr Sankey always blaming the hard workers at CityClean for all the troubles? Most of the past 15 years B&H has been a Labour run council. Not investing in the fleet, having insufficient staff to cover for holidays & sickness is a significant part of the problem. Our recycling rates are amongst the lowest in the country & when food recycling starts later in the year, what confidence have residents that it will be collected regularly?
How are the electric vehicles performing?
You know – the ones bought at great expense by the Green cretins when they were running the Council. Something like £2m cost for 3 vehicles.
If you are going to criticise them, at least be accurate counsellor. The cityonly became a labour majority council in 2023.
Remember, one of the biggest drags on finances in Brighton is the bankrupt i360 which was pushed through by comrade Geoffrey and his mates.
The Conservatives are spent force.
I do find it irritating that the same old excuses are ‘trotted out’ with regards to service failures. Below I can reveal why and I wont charge a KC’s fee :
Old vehicles
Management out of their depth
The real gangster however was the author of the KC report who charged the thick end of £250,000 to write an inaccurate report………nice work if you can get it ! Trebles all round ! Kerching !
If the council keeps blaming the workers it’ll turn into Birmingham by sea, I’m willing to put money on that
Sounds like somebody needs to go and have a fiddle with those pesky GMB members microwave. Any suggestions who may be able to call back for this job ? They have previous experience.
Microwave? A microwave is a device for heating up a delicious ready meal in 4m 30 seconds ….nothing more !
The Council is trying to shift the blame onto the workers to cover up its own failures, but the truth is that no employee is sabotaging anything. The real issue lies in incompetent management. The managers are a group of friends who were brought in from other departments within the Council, and they have no real understanding of how this service operates.
Recent changes were supposed to improve things, but instead, they’ve made the situation worse—and the Council refuses to admit it. Senior managers don’t even understand the legal regulations around drivers’ working hours, and drivers are sometimes asked to break the law just to keep up with unrealistic demands. But no one talks about that. It’s easier to accuse the workforce of damaging vehicles than to take responsibility at the top.