I farm out MOT's to 2 or 3 stations in my area depending on how busy I am so may not really be qualified to pass comment but will anyway, since computerisation the stations I use have not seen a VOSA rep, in person, yes, I am in a sleepy backwater in rural England, before computerisation the VOSA man was a regular fixture and certainly in my experience if he decided to parellel the tester doing the test on one of my customers cars the testers got nervous and I knew I would be there two hours !.

Now, with computerisation and wireless networks the VOSA man can sit outside your premise and monitor your MOT work, I know this has happened in one of my three Stations, another of my testers recently informed me of a "national failure database", in that he was sent details giving comparison to the national picture as to how he was comparing with the national average,he happened to be above the average on failing tyres, a critical safety feature which I have never disputed, Finally, are you seeing a greater failure rate as that seems to flag a VOSA visit? unfortunately, the downside of computerisation is that all stations can be compared side by side, any station that is not adhering to the national average can expect a visit to ascertain why, I believe this is a retrograde step, different stations have different types of customers so their results will be different, I really feel that we have more or less gotten to a Police state as far as MOT's are concerned, my view is , leave it to the testers, they are the ones under the spotlight, I trust all my testers implicitally, otherwise I would not use them, I believe in a fair test depending on the age of the car, VOSA spot checks, yes, they do them out my way , what good do they do , next to nowt ! I dislike "backdoor enforcement", uncredible in my view !!

Tony