Boris Johnson’s useless £300,000 water cannons will be flogged off at knockdown price after the Met never even used them
But only after taxpayer coughed up thousands of pounds to install CD players and radios in second-hand vehicles
RED-FACED Boris Johnson's ill-fated water cannons will finally be flogged off at a knockdown price, despite having never been used.
But only after the taxpayer coughed up thousands of pounds to install CD players and radios in the second hand vehicles which sat for years in a training centre.
In 2014 when he was Mayor of London, Mr Johnson authorised the Met to purchase three Wasserwerfer 9000 vehicles from the German police in a doomed bid to introduce them to the streets of London for riot control.
But their deployment was blocked by then-Home Secretary and leadership rival Theresa May, in the first of many humiliating slap downs.
Now the capital’s new Mayor Sadiq Khan will flog off the trucks after spending £322,834 refitting them - including £970 to install CD players and £32,000 to make them more "environmentally friendly".
Given they were originally purchased for just £85,000 the final sale is unlikely to claw back any of the costs for the taxpayer.
In July the Sun revealed that the Met were wasting a PC’s starting salary every year servicing the water cannon while they were hidden in a car park in Gravesend.
The Met admitted they spend £21,866 annually maintaining and storing three vehicles. But new figures released today by City Hall make for even grimmer reading for the London taxpayer.
Since 20014 the Met spent £3,109.20 fitting sirens, £19,035 painting them police colours and £1,688.04 on MOT tests.
Despite never being used the three water cannon clocked up £6,173.22 worth of “wear and tear”.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: “It beggars belief that such a huge amount of taxpayers’ money has been wasted on paying to store these redundant machines.
“We’ve been left in this position by the previous Mayor who rashly purchased them before he even had permission to use them, and now it’s my job to claw back as much of London taxpayers’ money as I can."
He claimed he has “spent a significant amount of time looking into how I can do this, and have been left with no choice but sell these machines through a process that charges a fee.”