Police pay out £1m compensation to motorists

3:06pm Monday 13th October 2008

Comments (6)   Have your say »

More than £1 million has been paid out by West Yorkshire Police following accidents involving police vehicles, figures obtained by the Telegraph & Argus reveal.

There have been 29 accidents involving police vehicles in the Bradford district since August last year, compared to nine between October 2005 and July 2006.

Since the force started managing a claims system three years ago, it has paid out a total of £1,096,677.58 to civilian motorists, figures released to the T&A under Freedom of Information laws show.

That is an average of almost £4,000 for each of the 279 accidents over the past three years.

Shipley MP Philip Davies questioned whether spending such a huge amount of money in pay-outs for accidents “could be avoided” at a time when police stations were being shut.

In Bradford there were nine accidents between October 2005 and July 2006 (63 in West Yorkshire) and 28 between August 2006 and July 2007 (122 in West Yorkshire). Since August last year to the end of July this year there have been 29 accidents involving police cars in Bradford (94 in West Yorkshire).

A spokesman for West Yorkshire police said it did not hold information on its injury accident database about whether any of the accidents involved unmark-ed police cars, the force helicopter or any other police vehicles.

Mr Davies said: “Obviously the police are going to have more accidents than general motorists.

“But at a time when West Yorkshire Police are closing police stations to the public because they don’t have enough money to keep them open, I think people will inevitable wonder whether spending all that money on accidents could be avoided.”

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “Any injury or death is regrettable, but there are more than 7,000 miles of roads in West Yorkshire and our vehicles cover around 15 million miles a year, most of them without incident.

“It is also worth noting that over the same period we have recouped about £500,000 from people in road traffic collisions involving police vehicles where the other vehicle was to blame.”

e-mail: marc.meneaud@telegraphandargus.co.uk