Mencap Northern Ireland

Liverpool Loses Out With Car Insurance

Insurance broker, the AA, say rural areas, for example, the Scottish Highlands and Perth are the cheapest areas in which to insure a family car, and , the most expensive area now is Anfield in Liverpool; this title having been won from the M23 area of Manchester which was where the most expensive premiums were paid last year.

Specifically, it is the streets close to Everton and Liverpool football grounds that have postcodes starting with L6, which have seen car insurance premiums pushed up quite substantially. This will not come as a surprise to football supporters who have to park their cars in the area to go to matches. The opportunistic, local youngsters try and cash in on the situation and actually demand a minimum of 2 to keep an eye on a vehicle parked in the street during a match. But, if there services are declined the chances are the car will end up with a smashed window anyway when the supporter returns to it.

Merseyside police, however, are not totally in agreement with this. Car crime in the area was reported to have fallen by 41% and was not obviously any worse than any other urban areas.

The Director of the AA Neale Phillips says, "Cars are most likely to be stolen in parts of Liverpool, Manchester, London, Cardiff and Bristol and premiums reflect this, but stolen cars represent only about 12 % of claims that insurers deal with."

He went on to say that in the more densely populated areas it is very likely that more cars are parked out in the streets and that alone increases risk to the vehicles, leaving them open to vandalism and attracting car thieves. There are a higher percentage of claims made in these areas but there is a huge variation in premiums in different postal areas even ones that are adjacent or not very far away from each other. One area where this is the case is in the Newcastle-upon-Tyne postal area. It has the highest and the lowest individual premiums throughout the UK.

Mr Phillips continued, "Some inner-city postal sectors command premiums of 782 (also shared with parts of Leeds and Sunderland), four times more than the 192 in the Kielder Forest, which is only 40 miles away."

In a survey carried out by the AA it was found that to insure a Ford Focus in any part of the UK, not including Northern Ireland, that the average car insurance premium increased by 9 pounds to around 369 pounds - this has been the lowest increase for 8 years. However, London proved to be the most expensive average geographic area for car premiums at 522 pounds, up 26 pounds on the previous year. On the whole people who live in the inner-cities, pay on average, up to three times more to insure a standard family car than those living in rural areas - and in Scotland they pay the lowest premiums of all.

The AA said that last year in East Anglia, the South East, the Midlands and Wales, premiums were less than the previous year.

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