Garage standards 'dreadful'

Garages and workshops are still failing to provide a good or even safe service to motorists, according to shocking results in a new mystery-shopping exercise by the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

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Garages and workshops are still failing to provide a good or even safe service to motorists, according to shocking results in a new mystery-shopping exercise by the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

The institute found 76% of 88 garages visited failed to service cars correctly while 36% were left with major faults – such as imminent brake failure.

Chief executive of the TSI, Ron Gainsford, said: ‘This is a dreadful situation. It’s not just that consumers are suffering by paying for work which hasn’t been done properly, vehicles can be left unsafe with the increased risk of people being injured or even killed.’

The Institute recorded very poor results for workshops belonging to the Retail Motor Industry (RMI), which represents the majority of garages in the UK, and garages part of the Scottish Motor Trade Association (SMTA). In all, 10 of the 13 RMI garages tested failed to carry out services correctly, while five out of six SMTA workshops failed.

Following equally disastrous results in other mystery-shopping exercises conducted by the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) in 2002, the RMI and SMTA drew up the Carwise code of practice in a bid to improve standards in the £10 billion-a-year industry. It abandoned efforts to have the code approved by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), however.

The Institute called on the RMI to restart the approval process or face more calls on the Government to regulate the industry with a licensing system.

The RMI said it is in discussions with the OFT. Chief Executive Matthew Carrington told Whatcar.com he was hopeful the code could be in place before the March 2006 deadline suggested yesterday by the National Consumer Council.

He said: 'We take the findings very seriously. It shows the industry in an appalling light. There's no excuse for the missed items Trading Standards found, and no excuse for sending cars back with potentially dangerous faults.'

The NCC says the Government should introduce a regulatory licensing system if workshops failed to improve by March next year. The DTI said it would consider such a move after its survey in 2002, but has since given no indication on when it might finally have to follow up on the threat.

A spokesman for the DTI told Whatcar.com : 'The industry is dragging its heels on self-regulation, but we remain committed to pursuing that first.'

Whatcar.com editor Iain Reid said: 'Motorists have waited long enough for garages to offer a better service. It’s time for some tough action to be taken to force standards up where they obviously can’t be improved with a voluntary system.'