Council vehicles cause thousands of pounds in claims
Councils across Britain pay out millions of pounds in compensation every year as a result of accident claims. The majority of these are due to slips and trips on council land which result in injury. However new recent figures show that for one council ninety percent of the money paid out for in compensation for accident claims is due to accidents being cause by drivers employed by the council. The figures show that since January 2007 Bournemouth Council has had to pay more than fifty thousand pounds to settle accident claims.
The majority of the accidents were caused by driving manoeuvres, with people hitting stationary objects or reversing into things, costing the Council more than twenty-nine thousand pounds to settle. Whilst thirty-one of the claims were made by rubbish trucks, the total amount of damage caused came to a total of just over five thousand pounds. The most expensive accident was when a lease car reversed into another vehicle, causing a little over nine thousand pounds worth of damage. It would seem that accidents are happening across the whole range of vehicles operated by the council, including a road sweeper which caused more than thousand pounds worth of damage after driving into a shop.
Whilst it might be inevitable that some accidents would occur due to the high volume of vehicles that the council owns, it is extremely important that everything is done to try and reduce the number of incidents, not only to keep costs to the council down but also to reduce any injuries that may occur. To this end Bournemouth Council have introduced a new driving at work policy, which aims to help cut the number of accidents.
In comparison to other compensation claims made against the council it would seem that driving accidents cost the most money. Non-motoring claims cost the council only £6, 254 pounds over the same period, with claims for incidents caused by tree roots costing almost half of this amount. The amount of money paid out for slip and trip incidents defied the national average and came in at zero despite 23 claims. The council’s insurers play an important part in determining the validity of cases and whether or not there has been a breach of the council’s duty of care. This has kept the costs low, but it is still a reasonable amount of tax payer’s money being spent on accident claims which could be better used elsewhere. The Council say that their insurers will investigate all claims thoroughly, and on average helps to defend around 75 percent of the highways claims brought against the Council.
In the future, spending a little more of the Council’s resource on further driving training may help reduce the number of vehicle accident claims. However it would be difficult to do away with them completely as with all jobs, you need to account for an element of human error. So far it seems the council are making steps in the right direction, and hopefully this will lead to a reduction in the amount of money they pay out in the future for accident claims.
Updated on 27/06/2008