Agnew’s director Brian Robinson on navigating Northern Ireland's car repair challenges

While wage pressures make it hard to find and retain skilled workers throughout the industry, Northern Ireland's dealerships also have to grapple with some very particular physical car repair capacity constraints which look likely to hinder growth for some time to come.

Northern Ireland’s population growth and the increasing number of cars on the road were all identifiable trends pre-COVID. Then came January 2020, when the authorities announced serious safety issues with ramp equipment at the state-run MOT test centres which they warned would most likely cause the backlog to worsen.

Signs of cracking on lifts were first discovered during an inspection of Larne MOT centre in November 2019 but it was not until an independent report in January 2020 that revealed faults were found on 48 out of 55 lifts in NI test centres.

An already stressed system had been dealt the first blow. Then came the Covid lockdown – from which the public sector testing regime found it hard to recover and is arguably still reeling.

Dealerships in NI, like elsewhere, know the challenge of recruitment and retention, having to regularly review pay rates to attract and retain technicians.

Public spending constraints however make it difficult for the DVA to match sector pay norms now expected by skilled technicians.

“It has been a perfect storm of ramp failures, COVID and manpower,” says Brian Robinson, a franchise director at Sytner Group-owned Agnew, talking to AM at Agnew’s Volkswagen centre on Boucher Rd in the city of Belfast.

A dearth of any meaningful activity over the intervening years meant the gap between demand and fulfilment of MOT tests has only worsened, exacerbated by political collapse of the Stormont Assembly and the failure of promised investment to come onstream.

The National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) Northern Ireland was in fact established in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic as the dealership community there realised that it had no collective voice of representation and so reached out to NFDA headquarters.

Early on, it reached out to the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) and the then infrastructure minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Initial discussions were promising but progress was to stall when the Assembly collapsed, pushing the issue once again on to the backburner.

Despite the political setbacks, the NFDA NI continued its efforts. Regular meetings with the DVA at least helped articulate the impact of long waiting times on both dealerships and their customers and, to be fair, improvements to data systems provided some respite.

Physical capacity limitations remained a significant hurdle though.

Two new MOT centres which were scheduled to open in 2022 - but which though fully equipped may even now not become operational until 2025 – have been effectively shuttered due to persistent equipment and certification issues.

Consequently, the gap between test demand and fulfilment has continued to chart a dangerous trajectory, with car owners having an onerous six-month wait. Dealerships meanwhile face stock-turn sclerosis as they struggle to secure the MOT certificate to be able to sell used cars.

The NFDA NI had even proposed an industry-led solution, suggesting that the dealership community could assist by performing MOTs on their own stock, mirroring the approach adopted across the border by the Republic of Ireland.

NFDA solution

There, the Road Safety Authority awards the National Car Testing Service contract to Applus+, a global testing, inspection and certification company. The NFDA NI's proposal failed to gain traction, however.

Indeed, the current infrastructure minister has remained steadfast in wanting to keep MOTs within the public sector despite repeated calls by the NFDA.

NFDA NI then sought a meeting in March, but was declined by the minster a month later, citing a diary clash. A month later NFDA NI hosted a cross-party roundtable where the MOT backlog was discussed at length.

With Stormont restored, NI infrastructure minister John O’Dowd went on to announce in late April the introduction of one-year temporary exemption certificates (TEC) from 1 June for cars first registered between 1 June 2019-31 May 2020 and 1 June 2017 -31 May 2018 which already have their first valid MOT certificate. 

Those measures effectively take out two cohorts totalling around 115,000 cars.

O’Dowd also announced the launch of public consultations on biennial testing – something which the administration had examined during the COVID period but which produced no definitive outcome at that time.

While TECs - and biennial testing if it goes ahead - are short term measures of the sticking plaster variety, Robinson tells AM that they in no way address the core concerns of NI dealers.

The NFDA insists that the move will only kick the can further down the road in terms of a viable long term solution and was not slow in expressing its disappointment that the decision had been made without consultation from the wider industry.

Further, it noted that TECs and a biennial MOT testing regime has been enacted and mooted respectively during the COVID-19 pandemic, “showcasing a lack of innovative approaches to tackle a chronic problem”.

Robinson says that going forwards the authorities are understood to be considering various permutations, such as retaining annual MOT tests but only for older vehicles after a certain cut-off date.

For the dealership community, the primary concern over an interrupted testing regime remains road safety, with fears that car owners will fail to adequately maintain their vehicles in the absence of the pre-emptive effect of an annual MOT.

For dealerships, the commercial risk resides principally in them being left with good used car stock which they cannot sell.

Agnew, which became part of the Sytner Group in 2012, operates 12 dealerships in Belfast, Newtownabbey and Portadown, representing seven brands including Audi, BMW Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Porsche, Volvo and Volkswagen. It is a sizeable business, employing around 1,100 people and in 2023 delivered over 20,000 new and used cars, generating more than £600 million in turnover.

Because of its scale, a dealer group the size of Agnew has the administrative capacity to be able to secure cancellations through monitoring the online appointment system diligently, although as Robinson, points out, it is never going to be as good as having a short lead time to start with.

“The gap between demand for tests and fulfilment of tests is widening and if you book a test today, you're looking at November,” says Robinson, who has been at Agnew Group since the 1980s, well before it was acquired by Sytner.

“We will be requesting about 400 appointments per month. Half of those will be for cars, which are in our stock. The other half are customer vehicles.

“The process is that you log on to the system, which can be slow. You apply for the first available date – which is now November and then we are continually having to refresh each day to get a cancellation.

“We get there by the cancellation route but that can take a day and a half. You can imagine that with 400 appointments per month, it's a lot of admin time. And with nine MOT centres in Northern Ireland, that could mean lengthy drives. You can be lucky or unlucky.”

The significant reputational damage that dealerships fear they risk through not being able to have good stock ready to sell simply by not having the necessary paperwork is being offset by offering customers pre-MOT inspection.

“That's something we can fulfil,” says Robinson. 

Since 2020, the net difference between the number of MOTs conducted and the number of applications has rocketed, currently sitting at just under 400,000 for private cars and light goods vehicles.

The NFDA remains resolute in its view that Stormont’s interim measures risk the safety of vehicles in Northern Ireland and do not represent the solution ultimately to tackling the backlog in any meaningful way.

It remains committed to applying pressure on Stormont to engage in discussions with itself as a key industry stakeholder in addition to others to improve the current MOT regime.

NI Assembly response

On MOT test concerns, in his April announcement the NI infrastructure minister John O’Dowd said DVA staff "have been working around the clock" to tackle high demand for MOT tests. 

He added: “In each of the last two years, the DVA conducted more than 1.1 million vehicle tests - the highest numbers ever recorded. Indeed, there were just seven days in 2023 when the DVA did not offer MOT appointments.

“A recruitment process is under way to help fill vacancies across DVA’s network of test centres and efforts have been made to reduce the number of no shows - approximately 50,000 customers failed to attend a booked appointment in each of the last two years, which places additional demand on this service.

“Unfortunately, despite these best efforts, waiting times remain high. TECs will give the DVA time to relieve exceptional pressure on the system by completing the recruitment process and progressing new MOT centres at Hydebank and Mallusk, which will provide the capacity to test more than 200,000 additional vehicles annually.

“DVA is also developing proposals for two new test centres at Campsie and Enniskillen.

“By introducing TECs, I have sought to strike the best balance between improving service delivery and minimising any risk to road safety. As road users we all have a personal responsibility to behave in a way that keeps ourselves and others safe and, regardless of TECs, it remains our responsibility to ensure our cars are in a roadworthy condition.”

• In the next part in AM's focus on Northen Ireland, next month, AM examines the risk that the country will lag behind other regions of the UK during the transition to electric