A study by online comparison site Moneysupermarket.com reveals that where you live plays a surprisingly big part in how much you can expect to pay on car insurance. The survey, which compares quotes for a 25 to 45 year old male driving a 2001 Ford Focus Zetec, found that the most expensive place in Britain to insure your car is East London where the average lowest quote was £315.01, a massive £184.75 more than you would have to pay in Dundee, the cheapest area according to the survey.

Unsurprisingly, the principle reason for car insurance in East London being so expensive is its high rate of car crime, indeed, the common factor amongst the most expensive areas is almost certainly that they are considered ‘high risk’ by insurers:

Most expensive areas:
         

According to experts the price gap between areas where you can expect to pay the most and the least for car insurance is likely to increase as insurance companies start to make perceived risk more of a factor in their calculations. Thus, whilst East London and the urban North West suffer from proportionately inflated premiums, parts of Scotland and the South West where car crime is relatively low enjoy cheaper deals. In Taunton, where the cheapers average insurance price was just £149.95, vehicle theft figures in 2006 according to Home office statistics for instance were just 0.2 per 1000 population compared to Hackney in East London’s 2.0.

Cheapest areas:

Richard Mason, director of Finance amt Moneysupermarket said: “Insurers weight these factors differently, so anyone who finds their insurance premiums too high would do well to shop around every year instead of renewing with the same insurer. This should save them a great deal of money.”

So the best advice appears to be – Shop around.

Of course, ringing round endless insurance companies to find the best deal is a laborious process so it’s probably a good idea to make use of comparison sites like, surprisingly enough, Moneysupermarket. Other such sites include Fool.co.uk where you can compare car, home and life insurance.

Another time saving option is to go through a panel insurer who will find the best quote from a pool of different insurers (Examples include Asda Car Insurance who use a panel of 20 insurers and Endsleigh).