Incidentally, for some reason many independent fitters don’t seem to balance the rear wheels as they say it’s ‘not needed’ (though I must say that this never happened to me at national-chain type fitters).

Well the difference between the front wheels and rear wheels balancing is that the with front ones you feel the vibration through the steering wheel, while the rear ones you don’t… but the damage to the tyre thread and potentially bearing and other suspension components is just the same front and rear. All four wheels (and the spare!) need to be balanced on the car.

However, rather then starting an argument with self appointed professionals, I usually simply say that I intend to rotate the tyres back-to-front every 5k miles so will need all four balanced