Irresponsible vandals dump several hired electric scooters in lake in Milton Keynes

The machines all belong to the the hire company Lime.

At the same time the scooters were found, visitors to the lake reported a large amount of fire damage on surrounding grassland, possibly caused by a campfire or barbecue getting out of control. It is not known whether the two incidents were linked.

Today the scooters have been fished out of the water by Lime.

The company’s public policy manager Conor Chaplin said “We take the inappropriate parking of our vehicles in Milton Keynes and across the country extremely seriously and we have already retrieved these scooters.”

He added: “The overwhelming majority of our riders park and ride our vehicles correctly and respectfully and we always recommend that local residents get in touch with Lime directly to report any abandoned or vandalised vehicles for collection by our locally-based operations team who use specialist tools to retrieve vehicles.“To prevent instances of inappropriate parking and vandalism, we have several measures in place including geofence no-ride and no-parking zones, real time GPS tracking and on board vehicle sensors that alert Lime when a scooter leaves a service area or if damage is incurred, which are then collected within 24 hours.”Riders can get in email Lime on [email protected].

The company recently invested £1m in Milton Keynes to launch a new updated model of e-scooter for people to hire.

The Gen4 e-scooters have a two-sided to stop them from tipping over when parked. This will reduce “clutter” on pavements and redways, say Lime.