In accordance with a What Automobile? evaluation, a couple of in ten (10.7%) vehicles that handed their MOT final 12 months ought to have failed as a result of garages didn’t comply with authorities testing standards.
There could also be 2.9 million vehicles on UK roads with probably dangerous flaws, provided that 26.7 million used vehicles older than three years previous are required to bear an annual MOT check.
These numbers are from an annual Driver and Car Requirements Company (DVSA) report that had been obtained by means of a FOIA request.
A gaggle of DVSA professional examiners retested a pattern of 1487 used vehicles at random on the areas the place the autos had been first evaluated as a part of the 2023–2024 MOT Compliance Survey.
These yearly inspections are meant to find out whether or not the suitable check requirements are getting used. Nonetheless, in 13.7% of circumstances, the DVSA examiners disapproved of the MOT check outcomes, stating that 11% of the vehicles that handed the check ought to have failed and that 3% of the vehicles that failed had been truly deserving of a go certificates.
The MOT compliance retesting performed in 2022–2023 yielded considerably greater outcomes than these ones, with an mixture disparity with MOT assessments of 14.4%. However, moderately than an extreme variety of unroadworthy vehicles receiving a MOT go, the variety of vehicles that ought to have handed the check however didn’t is greater in the latest spherical of retesting.
MOT check error information by 12 months
| 12 months | % of vehicles that handed MOT check that ought to have failed | % of vehicles that failed MOT check that ought to have handed |
| 2023-2024 | 10.7% | 3.0% |
| 2022-2023 | 12.2% | 2.2% |
| 2021-2022 | 10.1% | 2.1% |
Alarmingly, three issues that the retesters believed had not been precisely labeled had been current in 55% of the vehicles whose MOT check outcomes had been contested. Of the remaining autos for which the MOT check end result was declared faulty, 20% had two areas of disagreement and 25% had one level of disagreement.
Tires, suspension, and brakes had been essentially the most regularly disregarded MOT check failure points; these are all important security parts. In 731 of the vehicles that had been inspected, or 53% of the circumstances, MOT examiners failed to use the suitable check customary concerning the situation of the tires. 678 vehicles had suspension defects that had been misdiagnosed, and 629 MOT tester brake selections had been discovered to be flawed.
Most typical areas the place DVSA disagreed with MOT check station
| Defect class | Variety of defects disagreed |
| Tyres | 731 |
| Brakes | 678 |
| Suspension | 629 |
| Lights, reflectors and electrics | 392 |
| Non-component advisories | 157 |
| Visibility | 147 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 135 |
| Physique, chassis and construction | 127 |
| Steering | 59 |
| Car identification | 50 |
| Seatbelts | 40 |
| Wheels | 25 |
When it was found that sure garages weren’t adhering to the correct MOT check pointers, the DVSA took enforcement motion towards them. It despatched 67 advising warning letters to different garages and initiated disciplinary measures towards 14 companies. However, not each MOT check inaccuracy led to disciplinary motion, and in 123 situations the place the examiners thought the errors had been minor, nothing was finished.
Concerning the report creator
For almost all of her greater than thirty years as a motoring author, Claire Evans has targeting shopper points. Within the Nineteen Nineties, she wrote an recommendation column for Carweek journal, helping homeowners of faulty autos in acquiring the suitable quantity of restore from automotive makers.
She additionally labored for Which? for six years, managing the group’s yearly used automotive reliability survey whereas she was there.
Since launching the What Automobile? Reliability Survey in 2017, Claire has assisted hundreds of customers in deciding on essentially the most reliable used vehicles, in addition to new vehicles and SUVs.
