STRIKE action that took place across Worcestershire on Thursday has been hailed as a huge success.

UNISON said the strike by local government and school support workers was an overwhelming success as 2,500 workers in Worcestershire joined more than one million nationwide on picket lines and rallies against this year's pay offer.

In the county 5,000 bins went un-emptied, 29 schools were affected, libraries were impacted and park and ride services were reduced.

Ravi Subramanian, UNISON West Midlands Regional Secretary, said: "The strength of feeling amongst our local government and school support workers over the issue of pay was plain to see today.

"The decision to take strike action and sacrifice a day's pay was a very difficult one, particularly for the hundreds of thousands of low paid workers, but our members felt this was the only way to have their voices heard.

"We are repeating our calls for the Local Government Employers to get back round the table and negotiate a decent pay offer for those workers who have endured four years of pay freezes and below inflation pay offers as a result of the Government's misguided austerity agenda."

But despite this Worcestershire County Council and Worcester City Council say they coped very well during the action.

A spokesperson for the city council said they had emptied the majority of the 5,000 recycling bins not collected on Thursday and any remaining in Claines would be collected on Monday.

They added the rest of the services were maintained despite some cleaning teams in the city being reduced in size.

The county council said they too coped well.

"The county council was well prepared for yesterday's strike action," said a spokesperson. "While some disruption took place, mainly in relation to schools and public transport, we had contingency plans in place where possible to minimise impact to services for residents.

"We also kept residents informed via our website and Twitter feed in the lead up to the strike and throughout the day."