Police using wrong fuel
Police officers mistakenly filled their patrol cars with the wrong type of fuel nearly 300 times in 2017 – costing the taxpayer more than £50,000.
Of the UK’s 45 police forces, 40 responded and 33 admitted paying out for repairs to a police vehicle after a misfuelling incident in 2017 – at an average cost of £178 a time. Some 299 incidents of misfuelling were recorded, costing a total £53,337 in repairs.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said, ‘It’s staggering that such a simple mistake is being made almost daily. This careless attitude shows a lack of respect for those same taxpayers who both pay their wages and are forced to pay for the repairs.
‘Millions of people manage this task with their own cars by taking a modicum of care – police officers should extend the same courtesy to their vehicles.’
A spokesman for the Met said that since 2008 its vehicles had been refuelled 1.5m times and that mistakes were ‘a tiny proportion of total refuelling’.
