Police cars and vehicles have been crashing at a rate of one a week in Kingston over the past year.

The borough's officers and staff were involved in 52 collisions, 12 of which were on the way to an emergency call and nine in pursuits, between April 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008.

The force opted not to reveal what percentage of the incidents were deemed "blameworthy" but the overall figure of crashes is up from 31 the year before.

Eight personal injuries were caused to police or members of the public.

The official figures show that In 13 of the accidents police vehicles escaped harm but may have caused the crash.

Kingston's cops have yet to confirm whether they have finished their investigation into the collision on May 19 which saw a police van with sirens blaring and a VW Polo smash into the front of The Queen's Head pub in Richmond Road on the way to a fatal fire. A man had to be cut out of the Polo and taken to hospital.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was informed of the incident but passed the investigation on to the professional standards department of the Met.

A spokesman for Kingston Police said: "It must be commented that the severity of damage or injury cannot be ascertained without recourse to individual reports.

"What can be said is that many of these incidents will be very minor such as a scratch to a panel of a police vehicle but will still be reported as a collision."

Across London last year there were 5,160 accidents, of which 43 percent were deemed to be police officers' fault.

There were five fatalities. About four out of five crashes occurred when the sirens were switched off.