Meanwhile, a serving MOT tester told Autocar he believed the DVSA is increasingly shifting enforcement from inspectors to testers.
“I spend more time completing forms than testing cars,” he said. “It does increasingly feel like we’re doing the DVSA’s work.”
Responding to the criticisms, Price said: “DVSA enforcement examiners will continue to play a key role in tackling fraud. Taking a photo of the vehicle present at test will help provide us with information to target our enforcement efforts and we do not view it as an alternative to our enforcement work. It will also act as a deterrent to those looking to exploit the system.”
Regarding current enforcement staffing levels, Price said: “The DVSA has 102 full-time-equivalent examiners who solely do MOT work, a specialist MOT Investigation team and a dedicated MOT Intelligence Hub. The DVSA’s overall effort on MOT enforcement has been consistent in recent years and its performance in catching offenders has improved year on year.”
The DVSA’s camera trial is part of a long-running campaign to root out fraud in the system. Between 2020 and 2022, 687 MOT testers were disqualified by the DVSA and a further 228 in the 2022-23 period.
The DVSA’s director of enforcement, Marian Kitson, said: “The DVSA is fully committed to taking action against anyone who undermines the integrity of the MOT service and compromises road safety.”
One in 10 passed cars should have failed
A Freedom of Information request has revealed that more than 10% of cars that passed their MOT tests in 2023 should have failed. That’s some 2.9 million cars with potentially dangerous defects.
This information was contained in a report by a team of DVSA compliance examiners who retested a random selection of 1487 cars at the sites they were originally assessed.
The DVSA launched disciplinary actions against 14 garages and wrote 67 advisory warning letters to others.
