Cheshire Police reveal cost of repair bill caused by collisions in their own car parks

Feb 10 2011 by Allison Dickinson, Chester Chronicle

FIGURES released by Cheshire police have revealed how many patrol cars have been involved in crashes in their own car parks.

Since April 2007, the force has spent a staggering £63,903.35 repairing police vehicles after 141 collisions with everything from pillars to posts.

However, the good news is that their driving skills seem to be improving, with a year-on-year decline in the cost and number of incidents.

From April 2007 to March 2008 there were 50 prangs costing a total of £30,701.44 to repair.

These included damage ‘due to a waste bin being alongside’ a police car with a repair bill of £1,469.40 and a schoolboy error of starting a car in gear – causing it to ‘surge into a wall’ which cost £488.90 to fix, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The most expensive repair was £2,287.72 for crashing into a lamppost at the force HQ in Winsford.

Three incidents were caused by offenders resisting arrest, causing £2,027.81 worth of damage.

The cost reduced dramatically from April 2008 to March 2009 with a total bill coming to £15,647.68 – less than half of the previous year.

Included in this total were 38 incidents, including one where a car pulled out of a parking spot straight into a lamp post costing £1,518.60. The most expensive was another lamp post incident at £2,149.99.

From April 2009 to March 2010, the total cost of repairs came to £11,225.83 for 35 prangs with the most expensive coming in at £1,394.69, including one vehicle that struck a height barrier on the way out of a police station car park causing £1,069.90 worth of damage to the roof lights and another that reversed out of a parking space straight into another police car.

In the last 10 months the repair bill came to just £6,328 for 18 incidents, with the most expensive coming in at £1,520.71.