Almost 15,000 vehicles fail to attend booked MOT test

Almost 15,000 vehicles failed to turn up for a booked MOT test in recent months, new figures have shown.

Some 308,658 vehicle tests were delivered by Northern Ireland’s Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) between January and March of this year, including 262,415 full tests and 46,243 retests.

But the Driver, Vehicle, Operator, and Enforcement Statistics 2024/25 Quarter Four report has revealed that 14,928 vehicles failed to attend a booked vehicle test this quarter.

The figure is 27% (3,178) more than the same quarter the previous year (11,750), and has been recorded as the second highest figure in the time series.

The highest figure was 15,501 no-shows reported between January and March 2023.

There was a pass rate of 80.5% of full vehicle tests in the same quarter, slightly below that of October and December 2024 (81.3%) and the same quarter last year (82.2%).

Newtownards test centre was described as the busiest, conducting 128,365 full tests in the 2024/25 financial year, while Omagh did the fewest (34,153).

The pass rates by test centres for private cars at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024/25, ranged from 77.2% in Armagh to 85.4% in Belfast (Balmoral).

Meanwhile the DVA conducted 16,048 driving tests, up by 6.9% (1,039) than the equivalent quarter in 2023/24 with 83.4% (13,379) of these being for private cars.

There were 17,904 applications for a driving test this quarter, relative to 17,878 for the same quarter last year, an increase of 0.1% (26).

Of those, 539 candidates failed to attend a booked driving test, 16 less than the 555 who failed to attend for the same period in 2023/24.

The DVA also delivered 22,344 theory tests this quarter, a fall of 0.9% (195) relative to the 22,539 tests conducted in the same quarter of 2023/24.

There were 3,159 customers who failed to attend a booked theory test, approximately one in seven of all theory tests conducted during this period.

By the end of March 2025, there were 1,187,429 full and eligible licence holders with private car/light vans entitlement, which is the highest on record.

Meanwhile, in terms of enforcement, some 483 vehicles were checked, and some 189 fixed penalties notices were issued totalling £26,700 in fines, and 12 joint operations with the PSNI were completed as well as five cross-border operations with An Garda Siochana, and 18 spot checks on school buses.