The threat, if not explicit, was thinly veiled. Written in capitals, it had been left on a car parked outside the home of a waste-depot manager. The car’s tyres had been slashed. “Leave the case alone. Brakes next,” it said. “Nice dogs by the way.”
It may sound like a scene from a Sopranos-style mafia drama, but the threat was not made in mob-run New Jersey – the note was left in one of the most liberal, bohemian cities in England, where a battle over who really controls the bins is threatening to spill on to the streets.
The threat marks a low point in the decades-long bin saga in Brighton, which flared acrimoniously back into life this week. The story includes death threats, lorry sabotage and slashed tyres, accusations of “gangsterism” and counter-allegations of union bashing, equal-pay claims and strikes, stashed weapons, police investigations and dropped charges.
For Brighton and Hove’s 278,000 residents it has also, more mundanely, meant hundreds of missed bin collections.
The row between Brighton and Hove council and GMB union, which has a strong presence in the city’s main waste depot, resurfaced after a council report revealing a 140% increase in missed collections over the last six months blamed an outdated paper-based system, spending controls and an ageing fleet. But there was something else.
The report referred to “toxic behaviours” by a small coterie at the council’s Hollingdean depot, including managers having their tyres slashed, “ongoing sabotage of council vehicles” and “intimidatory acts both in the workplace and at managers’ homes”. It added: “A death threat was made as recently as January 2025.”
And there were other eye-popping claims made in a letter to staff at the depot this week, seen by the Guardian. “We have seen video footage of a manager’s home being intentionally picked out and stoned by a masked man,” wrote the director of the service. Another employee had been found dealing drugs using council vehicles and phones. A small number of individuals were to blame, said the director, but added: “It is not isolated. It is coordinated. It must stop.”
On Thursday, Sussex police said it was investigating a series of reported offences from 2023 to 2025, including criminal damage, possession of offensive weapons, harassment and arson. Some investigations had concluded other offences were continuing or at an early stage. Ch Supt Rachel Carr said the reports were “of a very serious and concerning nature”.
In a post on X, GMB’s Sussex branch condemned “any action that would harm the health and safety of our members and to the public”, adding: “All our members want to do is to empty bins and keep the streets clean for the residents of the city of Brighton and Hove.”
So, what exactly is going on in Brighton? In a small, strip-lit office in the council’s unlovely 1970s town hall, Bella Sankey, the council leader, has an air of steely pugilism. “It’s fair to say that there has been dysfunction and malpractice in our waste collection service over several decades,” she says. “What’s also clear is it is possible for the service to run really effectively.” Asked if there is a battle happening here on the south coast, she replies: “I think that’s an accurate description. To me, it feels like a mission.”
When Sankey became the first Labour majority leader in 2023, she was presented with 18 whistleblower accounts from the Hollingdean depot. Six months later, Aileen McColgan KC, whom she commissioned to investigate, published an explosive report.
More than 70 witnesses gave “appalling accounts” of a “toxic” workplace where shouting, threats of violence, and sexual and racial harassment were endemic. Managers said they were called, among other things, “a bunch of wankers” and “effing cunts” and subject to threats of stabbing. Those accused were either GMB reps or among “a group of around 10 white men” protected by them. The report sparked a search of GMB’s office at the depot, where a stash of weapons, including nunchucks, baseball bats, knives and a samurai sword were found.
Managers told McColgan that “everything” had to be run by the union to avert strike threats and that politicians who had received GMB funding sat on appeal panels and would “unashamedly just reverse” decisions to dismiss GMB members who had been sacked for misconduct. McColgan found that managers and the council had been “unable to respond appropriately to the behaviour [because] of the threat of industrial action and a (reasonably) anticipated absence of political support”.
Politicians are now barred from dealing with appeals, says Sankey. Council leaders meet regularly with both GMB and Unison, another union with a presence in the depot. On a less significant but perhaps telling note, GMB union reps are no longer entitled to their own office or a parking space at the depot.
When the McColgan report was published, GMB, whose general secretary, Gary Smith, cut his teeth as an organiser in Brighton, said the behaviours and language described in the report were “unacceptable” and that the union was investigating and would face down “discrimination and bad behaviour”. But GMB argued that the report contained unsupported statements, failed “the basic test of fairness” and lacked the voices of those accused of misconduct.
Some of those who worked at Hollingdean say they are still suffering the consequences of that period. “It was horrific, like working in a minefield,” says Eleanor*, a former waste operative. After making a complaint, she says she was harassed to the point that she felt scared to leave her house and finally left her job and relocated. “I was suicidal at one point, I wanted to walk into the sea,” she says.
Ella*, a former manager at the Hollingdean depot, says part of her is still broken. “It led me to leave my career utterly burned out and afraid,” she says.
Since the publication of the McColgan report more than 40 people have left the service and missed collections were down by 90% in the four months after its publication – before the recent spike.
Despite improvements at the depot, a small group are still using “bully boy” tactics, says Sankey. She says that some instances of vehicle sabotage occurred after a now deleted post by the GMB Brighton Sussex branch in February last year, which warned that “chaos is set to hit the city of Brighton”.
At the time, GMB said the deleted tweets were under investigation, with a spokesperson adding: “We wish to reassure the people of Brighton that this tweet does not reflect the views of the GMB union.” Sankey says she has had no response to a request for the results of that investigation. “If by chaos that tweet meant putting staff lives at risk, then that is gangsterism, not trade unionism,” she says.
GMB’s regional secretary, Gavin Davies, says Sankey’s comments are “inflamatory”, “unhelpful”, “extremely disappointing” and “very poorly timed”. Refuse workers need unions, he argues: “They carry out a hard, dirty, dangerous job that we all rely on.”
The union wants to “forge a positive working relationship” with the council, he insists, but it is failing to engage with a multimillion-pound equal pay claim the union lodged last August. “It’s frustrating our attempts to work with the council on issues such as equal pay keep falling on deaf ears,” he says.
Sankey is adamant that she is a full-throated trade unionist – she was a member of GMB but left after the McColgan report was published – and says the council will always look at claims and seek to work with recognised unions to resolve them. “I’m a massive believer in the power of unions to protect the human rights and dignity of people at work,” she says. “But unions are supposed to provide checks and balances and prevent abuses of power. They have to deal with people who abuse power and undermine the dignity and the safety of workers.”
The last 18 months have been bumpy, she says, but she is determined to carry on. “I will not stop until my staff are safe and our residents can rely on regular collections,” she says. Asked who will win the battle of the bins in Brighton, she doesn’t hesitate: “I will.”
* Names have been changed.
