A difficult national backdrop, with the party slumping in the national polls, has collided with a unique set of circumstances in Birmingham - where bin strikes and bankruptcy have created a picture of a city in decline.

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Rubbish still lines the streets of the inner wards of this city. Children play in debris, and residents despair at the level of fly-tipping in some areas - with warnings against doing this often ignored.

One man I spoke to told me how he erected a fence around a pile of rubbish that was building up to stop it overflowing into the roads. People complained of multiple residents living in one home - houses of multiple occupation - as a reason why rubbish was accumulating at such a rapid pace.

I was shocked that these were the streets of Britain's second city and that people were living in these conditions.

One resident in the Alum Rock area of the city - where the bin issue is particularly acute - told us about the scale of the problems on his road.

"The street is disgusting now," he said.

"Look at the bins. There is drug dealing everywhere in our road. There is a parking problem; our children can't walk - they hold their noses when they are walking."

Birmingham 'suffered' from Tory cuts

Having seen these scenes for myself, I asked John Cotton, Labour's leader on Birmingham Council, what he felt when he observed parts of his city.

He acknowledged there were issues - but he laid the blame for the city's issues at the hands of the Conservative government and its programme of austerity.

"There's still much more that we need to do, and I'm very conscious of that," he said.

"We know local government in this country, not just in Birmingham, has suffered because of 14 years of austerity.

"This city lost £1bn because of cuts promulgated by the last Tory government. We're now seeing that being fixed by a Labour government that's finally giving us staff funding."

While Mr Cotton may want to offer a forward-looking message going into these elections, there is no doubt that trying to sell a future that is still a work in progress is a challenging proposition.

The council leader is all too aware of this fact and knows his opponents are circling.

Who will voters turn to?

What's interesting in this set of elections is that it is all to play for.

Labour's opponents are not just to be found in Reform UK or the Conservatives - but in independent candidates, the Green Party, and also the Liberal Democrats, who hope to be the home of the anti-Farage vote.

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Acknowledging that threat, Mr Cotton claimed a vote for Labour was a vote for unity - and other parties would only cause division and pit residents against each other.

"There is no single competitor, I think, in these elections," he said. "All the other parties are in a position where they're not able to take a majority on the city council.

"There's very clear things at stake here - we either have unified leadership under a continuous Labour council that has stabilised the finances and invested in frontline services or people who are coming into this city who just want to turn communities against each other."

Mr Cotton's acknowledgement that the elections are all to play for shows he is operating in a fractured political landscape - and his desire to offer a message of hope and unity in a city plagued by issues could be wishful thinking.

A jury in Los Angels found Instagram, which is owned by Meta, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, were responsible for harm caused to the 20-year-old - awarding her $6m in damages.

Meta and Google both said they disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal.

But it's been seen as a bellwether decision that will inform hundreds more cases against social media companies for creating addictive algorithms.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex said "accountability has finally arrived" and declared: "The question is no longer whether social media must change - it's when, and how fast."

'The floodgates are now open'

In a statement, Harry and Meghan hailed the "landmark" court verdict as a victory "for families, advocates, and young people everywhere - and a powerful message that justice has caught up to Big Tech".

They said the case had "pulled back the curtain" and "confirmed what parents and experts have said all along: the harm isn't in parenting, it's in product design".

They said that the outcome had "changed the conversation about tech accountability forever", adding: "The floodgates are now open. There will be more cases, more demands for reform, and more insistence on responsibility.

How the case unfolded

After more than 40 hours of deliberation across nine days, California jurors decided Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their platforms.

The jury also decided each company's negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the woman, who has remained anonymous.

The trial, which lasted around a month and ended on Wednesday when the verdict was delivered, centred around arguments that Instagram and YouTube (and TikTok and Snapchat, but they settled out of court) were built to be addictive and were therefore harmful.

It focused on the case of KGM, or Kaley, as she was called in court, a now 20-year-old Californian who says she developed a number of mental health issues after using social media from a young age.

"How do you make a child never put down the phone? That's called the engineering of addiction," her lawyer, Mark Lanier, told the jury.

"They engineered it, they put these features on the phones. These are Trojan horses: They look wonderful and great...but you invite them in and they take over."

Tech bosses take the stand

The trial saw Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg take the stand in front of a jury for the first time.

During his testimony, the tech billionaire insisted that he built his platforms "to have a positive impact in people's lives".

"It's very important to me that what we do [...] is a positive force in their lives," he told the jury.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri was also called into court and told the jury there was no scientific evidence that social media was addictive.

He said it was important to differentiate between clinical addiction and what he, and others at Instagram, describe as "problematic use".

When asked about the plaintiff spending 16 hours in one day on Instagram, he told the court: "That sounds like problematic use."

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YouTube largely contested any claims it should be in court in the first place, arguing it doesn't count as social media and there was almost no suggestion in the evidence presented to the court that the plaintiff was addicted to the platform.

YouTube's lawyer Luis Li noted that the plaintiff said she lost interest in YouTube as she grew older.

"Ask whether anybody suffering from addiction could just say, 'Yeah, I kinda lost interest,'" Mr Li said in his closing statement. "What's your common sense tell you about that?"

Meta argued that the plaintiff's mental health difficulties had come from a troubled childhood and that "not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause" of her problems.

More cases to come

The trial is the first in a series of landmark cases against Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap that are set to follow in the US.

More than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts, accuse the companies of designing addictive products that have harmed young users.

Matthew Bergman, the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, is representing more than 1,000 plaintiffs in the proceedings and told reporters before the verdict that simply taking the case to trial was a win in itself, according to Sky's partner network NBC News.

"Win or lose the outcome of this trial, victims in the United States have won because now we know that social media companies can and will be held accountable before a fair and impartial jury," he said.

"And in some cases, plaintiffs will prevail, and in some they may not, but we are just gratified for the opportunity to get this far, and there will be many more trials in the future."

Rents reached 36.1% of average earnings in March 2025 - their highest level on record - according to the latest detailed annual review produced by the Chartered Institute for Housing.

Demand for private rentals increased during the COVID pandemic and continued to rise as higher inflation and interest rates from 2022 made homeownership less affordable.

At the same time, the supply of new rental properties has fallen. Higher mortgage rates and recent tax changes for landlords, including increases to capital gains and income tax, have also led some smaller landlords to exit the market.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) reports that tenant demand continues to outstrip the available supply of rental properties in the UK, with a "subdued" flow of new listings advertised.

Tarrant Parsons, RICS head of market research and analysis, told Sky News: "Demand growth from tenants has eased in recent months, and some data shows more rental properties on the market than a year ago.

"Even so, the supply of rental homes remains well below pre‑pandemic levels. The RICS survey continues to report negative landlord instructions, indicating a shrinking flow of landlords entering the market. With the Renters' Rights Act due to take effect in May, there's a risk that regulatory changes accelerate this decline."

Mr Parsons added: "With supply unlikely to improve meaningfully soon, tenants in many areas will continue to face significant affordability pressures."

See if your town has had one of the largest rent rises in the table below:

Long-term impact of Right to Buy

The latest UK Housing Review reveals the long-term impact of the Right to Buy policy, which enables social tenants to buy their homes at a discounted price.

"Right to Buy has been very important in helping people access and buy their own homes," Gavin Smart, chief executive officer of the Chartered Institute of Housing, told Sky News. "But you can't have the Right to Buy scheme without also paying attention to the consequences for the social rented sector and for replacing the homes that are lost.

The report's authors argue that, over time, the biggest factor in rising rents has been the huge loss of social housing across the UK, with the sector shrinking from 31% of all households in 1981 to just 17% today.

Since 1981, 2.8 million homes have been sold under Right to Buy, up to March 2025. Only around 1.2 million of those homes have been replaced, resulting in an overall shortfall of 1.6 million homes.

Sky News analysis finds that Right to Buy sales have likely continued to outpace social housing replacement in recent months.

In the first nine months of 2025-26, management data indicates that just under 11,000 local authority homes have been sold through Right to Buy, equivalent to a projected total of 15,000 for the full year.

This is compared to 12,198 social homes built in the latest year.

'Affordability crisis'

Right to Buy sales are likely to decrease in the future following rule changes under Labour, which have reduced the discount for buyers and which "strikes a better balance", said Mr Smart.

However, there is still an urgent need to grow the overall number of homes in the UK, especially the supply of "the most affordable social rented homes", he added.

This is because the overall decline in social housing has created competition for private tenancies and an "affordability crisis" in the sector for people who cannot afford to buy their own home.

"This particularly affects people who are renting in the private rented sector, and especially those who are supported by benefits to meet their rents," Mr Smart said.

Around 40% of homes sold through Right to Buy are now privately rented, often at significantly higher rents than social housing levels.

This shift has contributed to increased government spending on housing benefits and left many households in less secure and, on average, poorer-quality accommodation, the report says.

'Good landlords have nothing to fear'

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: "For too long, social homes have been sold off without being replaced, which is why we're overhauling Right to Buy to better protect housing stock and ensure money from sales is reinvested in new social homes.

"This is alongside our £39bn investment kickstarting the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation.

"There is also no evidence of an exodus of landlords leaving the rental sector due to our Renters' Rights Act, and good landlords have nothing to fear from these reforms."

'Once rents go up, they stay up'

While rent increases in some areas have started to slow, the director of flatshare site SpareRoom, Matt Hutchinson, told Sky News that, unlike other expenses like energy, "once rents go up, they stay up".

"They may creep up and down a tiny bit, but they don't come back down in any meaningful chunk. At the same time, people's salaries aren't going up; the cost of living has gone up," he said.

"There is a constant imbalance in the supply and demand numbers, and that will always be the case unless we somehow work out how to create more housing."

The flatshare website has recorded larger rent rises in northern England, the Midlands and Scotland in the latest year to December 2025 - concentrated in towns and smaller cities as people seek cheaper rents in suburban areas.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

The letter sent to Jo Boydell comes after a Berkshire hotel guest was sexually assaulted by a man who was wrongly given access to her room in 2022.

Attacker Kyran Smith, who had falsely claimed to be her partner, was jailed in February for seven and a half years, with the hotel forced to apologise for offering the victim £30 as compensation for what happened.

Travelodge has since acknowledged that the response was "inappropriate".

Describing the attack in Maidenhead as "utterly appalling", the prime minister has now told Ms Boydell that lessons must be learnt and that action must be taken to better protect guests.

His intervention is significant and comes a week after Ms Boydell refused an open meeting with MPs worried about Travelodge's safety procedures.

In the wake of the incident, the hotel has made some immediate changes and is due to carry out an independent investigation into what happened.

Ms Boydell, after pressure from MPs, has also met with representatives of Sir Keir, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips. But she has refused to take questions from a larger group of MPs, leading to accusations of a lack of transparency and accountability.

What has the PM said?

"This is a personal mission for me," the prime minister has written to Ms Boydell.

"No woman or girl should feel unsafe in this country, or fear for their life.

"Violence against women and girls is a national emergency and, as such, demands that all of us take action to tackle it.

"I welcome your recent meeting with several members of parliament. I was, however, very concerned that some MPs were not able to hear from you directly.

"I urge you to seriously engage with MPs and my government to address the concerns that remain around best practice interventions for prevention, the training being made available, and the pace of Travelodge's response."

Ministers are understood to be considering what legislative action could be taken, while there are also plans in place for cross-party talks with representatives from the hotel sector to discuss security practices.

Victims' minister Alex Davies-Jones has previously told Sky News that "nothing is off the table", while it's understood the chancellor has been intervening behind the scenes and has expressed an interest in leading any future safety summit.

The two Labour MPs who have been leading the campaign, Matt Bishop and Jen Craft, are also working on a possible 10-minute rule bill that could toughen up hotel safety measures.

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How has Travelodge responded?

In a previous statement, Ms Boydell said: "Travelodge takes this situation with the utmost seriousness, and that is why I met with MPs and ministers."

She went on: "We have made some immediate changes to our room access security policy, and have commissioned an independent review led by Paul Greaney KC, a leading barrister specialising in public inquiries concerning security, serious violent crime, and health and safety, to examine our room security procedures and the lessons we can learn from how this incident was handled.

"We have also asked for the ministers' recommendations on a leading violence against women and girls expert who can work closely with Paul on the review.

"We have offered that all MPs interested in this important issue can feed into the independent review in writing so their contributions can be fully taken into account.

"Our immediate priority is to progress this important work at pace, progressing our independent review and further strengthening our processes."

The survey found reports of racism, verbal attacks and violence.

Around one in five pharmacy owners said verbal abuse was a daily occurrence, according to Community Pharmacy England.

Dervish Girol, owner of Healthy You Pharmacy in Saltdean, said he had experienced a patient brandishing a screwdriver and staff being spat on.

'The abuse is escalating'

Mr Girol, an independent contractor who sits at Community Pharmacy England, told Sky News: "A few years ago, I had a patient that pulled out a screwdriver on me and wanted to assault me because I wouldn't give him the medication he wanted on the day."

The medication, Mr Girol pointed out, required a prescription - meaning he couldn't let the patient have it.

"And also, recently in my pharmacy, we have had my staff being spat on because a patient couldn't get what they wanted," he added.

"It was nothing to do with us. It wasn't to do our service levels. They wanted to obtain some medication for their liking, which requires a prescription."

He added: "The abuse towards community pharmacy teams is widespread and is actually escalating.

"Some pharmacies are experiencing incidents daily, and the feeling on the ground is the pharmacy staff are not receiving the same system and support as other NHS services when serious threats or violence occur."

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Community Pharmacy England is calling for stronger protection for workers.

The poll of 289 pharmacy owners, who represent more than 3,000 pharmacies, found more than half (55%) had faced verbal abuse in the last six months.

Three-quarters of those had experienced this weekly, with around one in five saying it was a daily occurrence.

Those who responded reported experiencing racist, religious, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic abuse directed at staff.

One said a patient had refused to be served by a pharmacist wearing a headscarf.