Crackdown bypasses HGVs
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• The Government is clamping down on Britain's unscrupulous garage owners—but there are no plans to get tough on rogue garages who maintain and sell HGVs.
This week the Office of Fair Trading is launching an Investigation into car servicing and repairs. OFT staff will speak to car drivers who have allegedly been charged for unnecessary and shoddy work. It
has received 27,381 complaints about car servicing and repairs in the past 12 months; motorists are frequently paying over the odds and driving vehicles which are not fit to be on the road. However, the Government has no plans to investigate the firms which repair, maintain and sell Britain's trucks.
Its view is that the major hauliers are professionals and would know if the work was of an acceptable standard, although smaller hauliers and novices might be caught out Robin Sharp, FTA head of vehicle inspection service, believes that servicing in the haulage business is largely selfregulating. "The major haulage fleets are professionals in their own right," he says. "I personally don't believe that a cowboy garage would last very long. You cannot compete in the haulage industry if you cut corners."