Garage Industry Trends, the motor industry data platform developed by Garage Hive, has welcomed the government’s decision to retain the current UK 3-1-1 testing regime. The announcement represents a positive conclusion to a consultation process that begun a year ago.
Whilst the governments says it remains “committed to MOT modernisation” (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-committed-to-mot-modernisation-as-consultation-concludes), the true headline – widely welcome by motoring organisations and the industry – is the retention of a current testing regime that had seemed under significant threat when the consultation launched.
Garage Industry Trends aims to ‘provide insights to everyone in the motor industry’ free of charge. In February last year the site added powerful reporting tools to enable insights into publicly available raw MOT data (https://www.garageindustrytrends.com/mot).
As Garage Hive and Lindleys Autocentres Director Alex Lindley progressed with analysing the 200 million lines of MOT data, he quickly found key issues which were shared to help support the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) in formulating their evidence-based response.
Commenting in March 2023, Hayley Pells, Policy Manager at the IMI, described Garage Industry Trends as ‘immensely useful in providing crucial evidence’, citing the importance of the IMI being able to make recommendations ‘based on real-world MOT performance’.
Crucially, the data had illustrated that for electric vehicles (EVs), the first MOT failure rate for dangerous items was significantly higher than for petrol vehicles.
Reacting to the news the MOT testing frequency regime will remain unchanged, Alex Lindley said: “It’s obviously great news, particularly for the independent sector, that relies on those cars coming through for the first MOT after three years. But most importantly, just based clearly on the evidence, it’s the right thing for drivers.
“I’m really chuffed so well done to everybody that campaigned to make sure the MOT stays the way it is.
“It’s a very sensible outcome. I think it would have been quite difficult for the government to decide to go against its own data so it doesn’t come as much surprise – but of course you never really know what’s going on behind the scenes.”
For more information, please visit www.garageindustrytrends.com.
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