WATCH: Birmingham residents blast 'disgusting' state of city as bin strikes reach fifth week

Collection of rubbish on the streets is a different matter

The council themselves and cabinet member for environment on the council, Councillor Majid Mahmood, admits that it could be three or four weeks still

before that kinds of levels of rubbish left on street corners that we've seen is collected

But a better sign this morning that bin lorries have been out and about. We also know that Birmingham City Council are paying a commercial rate

for Litchfield District Council bin lorries to come and also help them out

with collecting those wheelie bins and rubbish from around the city. So there is a better sign there for residents

And as we've seen, as I've been at the past couple of days, mobile waste collection centres where people can try and bring their rubbish

Ureita mentioned the 21,000 tonnes of litter and rubbish that's been left uncollected because of these all-out strikes

now in its fifth week. Negotiations continuing between Birmingham City Council and Unite

a couple of days ago said that those talks were intensive. Birmingham City Council called them productive

but seemingly yesterday no agreement reached as so far. And so these strikes continue

and those concerns around public health continue as well. But as all of these people around this city deal with the bins

the MP for Hodge Hill and Solihull North, who's also chair of the Business and Trade Committee, Liam Byrne

he's been in Japan for a fact-finding mission with seven other MPs at the end of last month But rather than returning with the rest of those MPs he stayed out there for a personal trip Now a spokesperson for Liam Byrne says that that part of the private trip is personally funded but he is in Japan and there been a lot of anger as you can imagine

from residents that they are dealing with a bin crisis and their local MP has not returned

to the area in order to try and push the likes of Birmingham City Council and Unite to come

to some kind of agreement to help out his constituents. Funny enough, I was in Hodge

hill yesterday i got reaction from those residents about how they feel about these bin strikes and

here's what they told me i'm absolutely furious this has been going on for many many weeks now

couple of months i shouldn't have to be after paying council tax making my way to empty bins

and there's a service that's provided to do that well i think it's disgusting it's been going on

well for a month or so now it happened about seven eight years ago and the council hasn't learned and

the electoral hasn't learned, it's clearly people elect the same old people

who are incompetent and they don't really care about the local community or the city

It's all a game plan. This is just training the public to do it. They're doing it on purpose, slowly, four weeks

two weeks, three weeks. This is just training for the future. What do you make

of the state of Birmingham at the moment, the bins on the streets? Diabolical, third world

countries are better. You can hear there are a lot of anger

from residents just at the state of the streets they're finding in. Residents in Hodge Hill there, part of Liam Burns' constituency

And as those concerns continue, those concerns around public health increase as well

it's Unite and the council once again head into negotiations