Reading: Scotland Yard in firing line over replacing patrol car tyres

By Denna Bowman

Scotland Yard is under fire after it paid out an estimated £500 to replace all four tyres - and the spare - on a patrol car, after one tyre suffered a puncture.

According to the report in the Daily Mail, the other three tyres were all in good condition and the spare was brand new.

However, when the mechanic, a contract employee, turned up to sort out the problem he insisted that he had to change them all because the tyres all had to be the same make.

The incident has come to light after a police officer in the Metropolitan Police questioned the practice, which is believed to apply to all forces, at a time when the force is suffering financial cutbacks.

PC Ken Brown, of Barking and Dagenham police, said he was amazed when he got a puncture recently and the mechanic who turned up removed all four tyres and replaced the spare in the boot.

Writing to The Job, an in-house magazine for Met employees, he said: ‘I asked why this was and was told that a police vehicle must have the same make of tyres on every wheel.

‘With the recent announcement of cutbacks within the Met, I feel I should mention this.’

Scotland Yard, which defended changing all the tyres, claiming it is sometimes the ‘most economic decision’, is tasked with slashing 20 per cent off its £3.5billion budget in the next four years.

The average premium tyre costs £100 - so the costs of replacing all five would have been in the region of £500. However, Nigel Jakubowski, director of transport services at the Met, confirmed that all the tyres had to be changed if they were different makes.

He explained that sometimes it was also ‘more economic’ to change them all. He said: ‘The decision to change all the tyres arises when the tyre model fitted to the vehicle is either no longer available, or there will be a significant delay in the order.

‘However, in some circumstances the changing of all the tyres is in fact the most economic decision as the Met procures specific tyre brands through a Government Procurement Framework at significantly reduced cost.’

According to the Daily Mail, there are around 35,000 police vehicles in the UK. It added: “A police source said that at a conservative estimate around 20 per cent of them suffer a flat each year.”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 26th, 2010 at 1:06 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.