Background
4.Sections 45 and 46 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 provide for what is generally known as the MOT test.
5.The Vehicle Inspectorate, an Executive Agency of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, has responsibility for ensuring compliance with standards of vehicle roadworthiness in Great Britain. The Inspectorate has embarked on a project to create a computer link with the 19,000 or so MOT testing stations to enable the results of individual MOT tests to be fed into a central database. It is intended that the database should be established under a public/private partnership contract.
6.One aim of the computerisation project is to improve the Inspectorate's control of testing standards by enabling them more easily to detect any MOT testing stations with an abnormal pattern of test results. In addition, the database will enable the Secretary of State to accumulate more comprehensive and authoritative statistical data on trends of vehicle roadworthiness to assist in policy formulation.
7.Enabling legislation is not required to undertake the computerisation project. However, there are three main areas where the existing legislation imposes constraints on the project:
the way the Government enforces the requirement to have a valid MOT test certificate;
the way in which the Vehicle Inspectorate recovers the cost of supervising the MOT scheme; and
the scope for using data collected in MOT tests.
