The UK has one of the best road safety records globally. This has come about due to robust legislation, enforcement, and a lot of effort on the part of the road transport sector.
A critical part of the UK’s safety regime is the annual MoT test – so the suspension of the test back in April 2020 was a matter of great concern. Although only a short-term measure, and a reaction to the challenges of Covid-19, it came fraught with risk.
Since its reintroduction, industry and DVSA have worked hard to clear what rapidly became an enormous backlog, and to ensure no vehicle should be allowed to go beyond its normal test date unless necessary. The latest data suggests we have just about caught up, and thanks to operators acting responsibly, the safety data has remained largely unchanged.
Following on from this, at the behest of the Department for Transport, SMMT and other stakeholders worked with DVSA on a review of the MoT regime. The outcome of that report led to several important changes being implemented – all hopefully resulting in an improved end to end service. Even more hopefully, we won’t see such a disruption to the service again.
