Clumsy police officers in Sussex cause £158 of damage every day - by reversing their cars into lamp posts, bins and other motors.

Dozens of cars belonging to members of the public have been dented and static objects toppled or crushed.

Taxpayers have footed an £84,000 repair bill over the past 18 months.

Figures released after a Freedom of Information Request revealed there have been 185 cases of police cars crashing in reverse since 2005.

The force only started recording the incidents midway through that year so the real total for the full two years would have been higher.

Most incidents happened in police station car parks, when officers were in a hurry to answer emergency calls and accidentally collided with static objects such as buildings, posts and other parked vehicles.

Forty of the incidents involved backing into a member of the public's car but no one was injured in any of them.

All the money involved was used to fix the cars rather than pay out damages.

Because the force's insurance policy does not cover these accidents, the cash, which can be divided into almost £58,000 for last year and just under £26,000 for the six months before that, was taken from Sussex Police's annual budget.

This money could have paid for three newly qualified police constables, who earn about £20,000, for a year.

Sussex Police's civil claims manager Brian Welfare said: "We are talking about very lowimpact incidents involving cars reversing just a little bit too far - sometimes only a scratch is involved.

"But an organisation like ours needs to keep its fleet of vehicles in tip-top condition and repairs can cost a lot of money - more than an ordinary member of the public pays.

"As well as dealing with dents we have to remark the livery and things like that.

"But what we are talking about is an average of £500 per accident, which is too much money to be losing this way."

Mr Welfare said he was investigating ways to cut the number of the costly but minor accidents. He said even though the figures had only been properly recorded for the past year and a half, he estimated the number of incidents had remained more or less the same for several years. He said reverse sensors, which bleep as the cars move backwards, had already been fitted to more than 80 per cent of the force's cars over the past two years but they were not very effective.

He said: "On an emergency call when someone's life is in danger there could be some slightly reckless driving but you have to make allowances in cases like that.

"What I am hoping to do is identify what is avoidable.

"The whole idea of analysing the data is to find out why the incidents happen and see if they can be prevented."