The MOT fee: why a rise is overdue, and why it isn’t the whole problem

The MOT fee has been fixed for as long as I can remember. I was running garages 15, 20, 25 years ago and it was the same story then.

The cap for cars, vans and motorhomes is £54.85, and it hasn’t moved since April 2010. Now, at last, a rise is being talked about seriously. The Independent Garage Association is pushing for £95, and the government has agreed to review the cap.

A rise is long overdue, and it would help a lot of garages. But I’m going to say something that won’t make me popular. The fee isn’t the whole problem. We are.

Here’s my take, in under three minutes.

Most garages don’t recover what an MOT costs them

Think about what’s changed in 16 years. The equipment. The facilities you have to have. The training. The legislation around the test keeps going up. The fee has stayed exactly where it was.

So in most garages, the MOT doesn’t recover what it actually costs to carry out on a modern vehicle. You’re losing money on the test before anyone’s picked up a spanner.

If the cap does go to £95, that’s a rise of about 73% (£40.15 on top of £54.85). It sounds like a lot. Spread over 16 years of frozen fees and rising costs, it isn’t.

We’ve taught the public what the MOT is worth

Here’s the uncomfortable bit. For years, some of us have used the MOT as a tactic to get cars through the door.

• A service and an MOT for £99, to entice customers in.
• MOTs discounted to undercut the garage down the road.
• Sometimes, MOTs given away free.

Every time we do that, we tell the vehicle owner exactly what we think the test is worth. Then we wonder why nobody values it.

I think it’s the wrong approach. Using the MOT as an ingredient to get people through our doors is wrong.

My view: one set price, no discounts, no bundles

For me, the MOT should be a set price that reflects the costs, the training and the equipment that go into testing a modern vehicle. And it shouldn’t be packaged with another offer of any sort to pull someone in.

I also believe, and this is probably a bit more of a controversial view, that we also shouldn’t be offering them free, and we should not be allowed to discount them in any format.

Andy Savva

I think that would level things out. Nobody would be using the test as bait, so nobody would need to. And I think standards could come up with it.

Remember what the MOT actually is

We carry out a statutory test on behalf of the government. In facilities we pay for, with equipment we pay for, to standards they set.

Making a return on the investment that takes is the least we should expect. That’s why it’s fundamental that the fee is looked at across the board.