Bin workers attacked 108 times in one year as union demands bodycams for staff

Bin workers were abused and attacked 108 times in the past year, new figures have revealed.

Unions are calling for staff to wear bodycams to protect bin crews from aggressive members of the public.

In Knowsley, Merseyside, a bin worker was headbutted by an angry homeowner after not all their rubbish was thrown away.

Police were called to an incident in Walsall, West Midlands, after a bin loads was punched in the face.

A street cleaner was beaten with their own litter-picking stick, said Manchester City Council.

In the capital, a bin worker's phone was stolen in Brent, while another broke his wrist after being hit with a metal bar.

In Newcastle, a driver frustrated by being held up behind a refuse truck reversed their car into a bin collector, knocking them to the ground.

In Enfield, north London, a crew member had what turned out to be a fake firearm pointed at him during a separate incident.

Birmingham City Council, which has been affected by an ongoing strike, said one street cleaner developed post-traumatic stress disorder following an assault combined with racial abuse.

Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire reported a separate case in which a worker was racially abused after declining to collect contaminated waste.

Three men were jailed for a combined 18 years over two coordinated attacks carried out in Stoke last year.

Will Dalton, of the GMB union, responding to the findings obtained through a Freedom of Information request, said: "Every single day refuse workers come across aggression, verbal abuse, and physical violence."

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He argued that bin collectors should be issued with bodycams, "like many other public-facing workers", to help deter attackers and support prosecutions.

The Local Government Association said: "Any attack on a refuse collector, verbal or physical, is completely unacceptable."

This follows a BBC investigation carried out last year which found refuse and recycling staff across the south east had been subject to physical and verbal attacks.

Freedom of Information data found Kent County Council alone recorded 135 cases of verbal abuse against refuse collectors, while councils across Sussex logged 196 further incidents.

One waste operator described a case in which a car was deliberately used "as a weapon" against two members of staff at a recycling centre.

Simon Larbey, people development director at Veolia, said the incident happened within weeks of him starting his role in East Sussex, adding that CCTV footage gathered at the time was not sufficient to secure a conviction.

Veolia said at the time it had since managed to reduce abuse incidents at its sites from around one a week to roughly one a month.

Horsham District Council revealed two refuse crew members were struck by a car last year while carrying out their rounds, with one left with life-changing injuries.

Council director Paul Anderson said drivers sometimes mount pavements in frustration at being held up behind bin lorries.

In the south east, a number of refuse and recycling workers had started wearing body-worn cameras to ensure any attacks would be caught on camera.

Amanda Hart, a neighbourhood policing inspector at Sussex Police, said the body-worn technology was helping with evidence gathering.

"The body cam footage is a really good evidential product, for a jury to see the position that person was put in," she said.