Despite being in extended consultation with members of the MOT Trade Forum regarding a review of the MOT fee for 2014 – suddenly ‘out of the blue’, a surprise announcement from the Ministry of Justice quoted the new Roads Minister Robert Goodwill as saying, “…we are freezing the price for an MOT Test…” (We can only assume the news was issued by them because it was released alongside announced measures to combat fraudulent whiplash injury scams, all under the general heading of helping motorists to “cut the cost of running a car”).
Jim Punter, editor of MOT Testing Magazine and Chairman of the MOT Trade Forum said, “I am very disappointed at hearing that the MOT fee is to be frozen yet again for another year – that’s a five year freeze altogether.
If they want to freeze the MOT fee, that’s fine – just stop adding more and more inspections of different components, which require additional equipment which needs to be purchased by hard-pressed Vehicle Testing Stations, also increasing the time it takes to Test every vehicle.
Incidentally, some of these added checks are only marginally beneficial to ‘road safety’.
If the government were serious about saving motorists money, they could reduce the severity of number plate inspections which are after all, only about making sure number plates are visible to enforcement cameras, to collect revenues from the motorist via motoring fines.
What is particularly galling about this is that we have been in extended discussions on the subject with the DfT on the subject most of this year. It is not entirely a surprise as a planned meeting on the subject was unexpectedly cancelled at a day’s notice in September.
Testing Station owners and MOT Testers should be incensed at this decision, and I urge them to complain vociferously to their Members of Parliament. We now have more things to check on the MOT Test than ever before with extra ‘testable items’ added by the EU on top of everything else, and a fee which has been significantly eroded by inflation over the last four years, and now for yet another year”.