Skip to content

Lincolnshire Police car crashes cost force £200k

Harry Parkhillin Lincoln
BBC A badly damaged white police van with its whole bottom bumper removed and front left wheel and wing damaged. The van has yellow and blue flashes, along with a "Police" logo on its side.BBC
A vehicle awaiting repair at the Lincolnshire Police headquarters in Nettleham, near Lincoln

Crashes caused more than £200,000 of damage to Lincolnshire Police cars in 2025.

Police vehicles were involved in 177 crashes, data provided under a Freedom of Information Request showed.

The force said damage to police vehicles was sometimes "unavoidable", particularly in pursuits.

Insp Jason Baxter said: "Sadly, we do have occasions where an officer is injured or tragically killed. But the ongoing training our officers receive from our training unit, which is of a national standard, does everything it can to reduce those possibilities."

A police officer with grey hair, slicked back, is wearing a yellow high-vis jacket of a black uniform as he stands in front of a yellow and black "tactical support team" van. He has a serious look on his face.
Insp Jason Baxter says criminals have damaged police vehicles in some incidents

Baxter said collisions covered by the data included "the whole spectrum, from low-end minor road traffic collisions right through to high-end tactical pursuits".

Some incidents involved criminals "using their vehicle to actively damage police cars, to ram them to try and get away", he added.

The force reported 151 crashes per 1,000 officers, with a total cost of £204,440.

Total incidents were down from 195 in 2024, when the bill was £392,013.

The force confirmed it had third party, rather than comprehensive, insurance, meaning it pays its own repair costs when its drivers are at fault, but claims back costs from third parties when they are at fault.

A man with very little, short grey hair, and grey beard looks at the camera while sat in a comfortable looking red leather armchair
Clarence Patterson says he was in "total shock" when a police car crashed through his garden wall in Lincoln in 2025

In September 2025, a police car heading to an emergency crashed through the wall of Clarence Patterson's garden in Lincoln.

"The wall was demolished, about 20ft of it," he said. "It was a total shock seeing all the police vehicles and seeing the damage."

Patterson, who was not at home at the time, expressed understanding for the police.

"Crashes are expensive because these two cars, I understand, were written off. That would have been a big expense.

"We are all paying for it, but what's the alternative? You have to catch the crook, so you've got to give the police some leeway."

A crashed police car with its bonnet bent up and its wheels twisted. It is embedded in a the wall and hedge of a garden. We can see a bent lamppost. A police officers stands beside it.
The crash outside Patterson's house in September 2025

The Police Federation of England and Wales, which represents 145,000 rank and file officers nationally, said crashes reflected "a tiny fragment" of deployments.

Phil Jones, roads policing lead, added: "Police officers are highly trained and experienced drivers, but their work involves exposure to high levels of trauma and stress while unsustainable workloads and exploitative working conditions increases the risks they face."

Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North.

Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices

More on this story