This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Emergency services spent hundreds of thousands of pounds scrapping and replacing contaminated vehicles after the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings, it has been revealed.

Police and ambulance services had to destroy 24 cars, vans and 4x4 vehicles following the attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. The pair collapsed after coming into contact with novichok at Skripal’s home in Salisbury on 4 March last year. DS Nick Bailey, 39, was also taken to hospital.

They recovered but four months later Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital after she and her partner, Charlie Rowley, came into contact with the perfume bottle used to spray the novichok. Rowley recovered.

A freedom of information request by the Salisbury Journal has revealed that South Western ambulance service (SWASFT) and Wiltshire police spent £891,922 replacing vehicles after the incident.

The ambulance service was forced to discard eight vehicles, while Wiltshire police had to destroy and replace 16.



The ambulance service scrapped Mercedes Sprinter 519 CDI ambulances, one worth £137,318, another costing £56,673 and a third valued at £56,506. It also had to destroy five Skoda Octavia 4x4s, costing a combined £93,334.

A spokesman for the ambulance service said: “The costs involved in the destruction of these vehicles, including staff overtime, have been covered by NHS England with funds from central government. The vehicles have all been replaced at no additional cost to SWASFT.”



Wiltshire police spent £460,000 replacing vehicles, including a Vauxhall Vivaro valued at £10,862.

Angus Macpherson, the police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon, said: “I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to recoup all costs so far incurred by Wiltshire police in relation to the incidents last year.

“When an operational response is of the scale that Wiltshire police’s was, it is no surprise that there were significant costs involved, with the operations costing more than 10% of Wiltshire police’s annual policing budget.

“This includes around £460,000 being spent on replacing vehicles and the associated costs of backfilling those vehicles including hire cars.”