As many as three-quarters of UK garages are failing to service customers’ cars properly, with standards officers describing the situation as “dreadful”, Reuters reported.

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A damning survey reportedly found 76% of garages did not service cars correctly — with 36% of these vehicles left with major faults such as imminent brake failure.


“This is a dreadful situation which just hasn’t improved over the years,” Ron Gainsford chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) said in a statement cited by the news agency.


The poor performance by main dealers and independent garages reportedly prompted the TSI to call for the industry to put its house in order.


“This could mean mandatory licensing, so that those garages that continually do a bad job could be struck off – their registration would be ended and they would cease business,” the TSI’s motor spokesman Pete Stratton told Reuters.

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The report said the highest percentage of culprits was among garages who were members of the Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI) and the Scottish Motor Trade Association (SMTA). Ten out of 13 RMI members failed and five out of six SMTA members failed.


Only 21 cars were serviced correctly out of 88 taken to garages across Britain with deliberate faults ranging from loose wheel nuts to defective brake lights, Reuters said, noting 43 of the cars were judged by independent engineers to have major errors after servicing.


Some of the garages involved in the servicing and MOT surveys now face either prosecution or formal action, such as written warnings, Reuters said.


Matthew Carrington, chief executive of RMI reportedly said it took the findings “very seriously”.


“We will work with trading standards to fully investigate these claims,” he said in a statement cited by Reuters.