Sussex Police vehicles involved in 171 collisions in a year

The figures were shared by Chief Constable Jo Shiner during a meeting with Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne.

The force has a fleet of around 1,200 vehicles insured and Mrs Bourne said crashes were damaging to its reputation.

The collisions resulted in eight vehicles being written off at a cost of £94,608, which CC Shiner said was low compared to other forces.

Over the past four years, collision claims have totalled more than £2million – just over £766,000 in 2019/20, £319,000 in 2020/21, just over £641,000 in 2021/22, and just under £409,000 in 2022/23.

CC Shiner, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Roads Policing, said: “If you look at them – if you take away the Covid [year] – they’re on a downward trajectory and I do believe that much of that is because of some of the initiatives and particularly the governance that we’ve brought in.”

One of those initiatives has been a trial run in Chichester where data was collected from ten police vehicles using telematics.

Telematics is essentially a way to monitor how vehicles are being driven by using GPS technology and on-board diagnostics to plot their movements and performance.

CC Shiner said the vehicles had been involved in six incidents before the trial run and zero during the monitoring – a fact which saved the force just over £5k.

She added that none of the officers who took part in the trial saw the telematics system as being ‘Big Brother’, with the vast majority agreeing that they now thought much more about the way in which they were driving.

Sussex Police collaborates with nine other forces when it comes to insurance, while its driver training is seen to be one of the best in the country.

Despite having the second largest fleet out of the nine, it is joint-second lowest when it comes to claims made.

One area which is not included in the collisions data is Tactical Pursuit and Containment (TPAC).

This is a highly skilled manoeuvre which sees officers use their vehicles to box in another vehicle and bring it to a halt.

There have been 99 TPAC incidents since 2019/20, with one vehicle being written off at a cost of £23,000.

CC Shiner said: “TPAC is a very effective tactic which we use to be able to bring an incident to a safe conclusion should we need to do so.

“I absolutely commend both the professionalism of the training but also the professionalism of those officers who are accredited as TPAC drivers because it is a skill that is earned and they have to work hard to pass that course.”