Motorists Forum Recommendations

Thursday 13th December 2012 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

I am today publishing the Government’s response to the Motorists’ Forum sub-group report recommendations.

The Motorists Forum has set out a raft of recommendations aimed at making sure motorists have the best possible consumer experience when having their vehicles serviced or repaired in the report released today. The Department for Transport (DFT) and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) have worked closely together to produce the Government response.

The car service and repair sector is worth around £6.9 billion per year to the Great Britain economy with 150,000 MOT tests taking place every working day. The garage industry is important both to transport policy (especially road safety) and as part of a wider landscape of consumer affairs. It is important that consumers feel confident in the quality and the value for money of the services they are receiving from garages. The Motorists Forum’s report has offered some useful proposals for how this can be achieved more consistently.

I welcome the work carried out by the Motorists Forum and believe the recommendations we plan to adopt will help build on existing best practice in the industry and encourage garages to improve customer services, without the burden of extra legislation. The recommendations we will be adopting will promote the wider adoption of self-regulation (OFT-TSI) codes of practice by garages and encourage greater publication of information regarding the services they offer. As of November this year we have already introduced the requirement to have vehicle mileages printed on MOT certificates to help combat “clocking”.

The DFT and BIS will now use their strong relationships with the garage industry and stakeholders to promote the adopted recommendations.

The Motorists Forum sub-group report and the Government’s response can be found on the gov.uk website.