Unused water cannon bought by Boris Johnson while London mayor sold for scrap at huge loss
- Three vehicles were supposedly to be used for crowd control in capital but were in poor shape and eventually banned in England and Wales
Three unusable water cannon bought by Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London have been sold for scrap, at a net loss of more than £300,000 (US$384,000).
Johnson bought the crowd-control vehicles from the German police in 2014, in anticipation of social unrest, without checking whether they could be used on London’s streets. In one of his most humiliating episodes as mayor, home secretary at the time Theresa May banned them from use anywhere in England and Wales. It left the capital’s taxpayers with three expensive white elephants.
Current mayor Sadiq Khan pledged to claw back as much money as possible on the redundant vehicles by selling them. But after almost two years the mayor’s office admitted defeat in its attempt to find a buyer.
It announced on Monday it has agreed to sell the vehicles for just £11,025 to Reclamations Ollerton, a scrap metal yard in Newark, Nottinghamshire.
The fee recoups 3.4 per cent of the £322,834.71 spent on the vehicles since 2014.