What Happens If Your Car Fails Its MOT

What the result sheet means

Since May 2018 every item a tester records has a grade. The grade decides whether the car passes.

A pass can still carry a list of advisories and minor defects to monitor or fix. A fail comes with a refusal of an MOT test certificate, which lists every defect found. The MOT advisories explained pages describe the commonest wordings on that list one by one.

Some fails are put right on the day. If the test centre fixes an item and retests it before the result is recorded, the record shows the item as put right during the test and the car passes. On a history that appears as a fail and a pass on the same date.

Can you drive a car that has just failed?

You can take the car away from the test centre only if both of these are true:

• Your current MOT certificate is still in date. Most people test early, so this is often the case.
• No defect on the result sheet is marked dangerous.

Even then, the car must meet the minimum standard of roadworthiness at all times. A fail for a major defect does not by itself make the car unroadworthy, but the item that failed is your responsibility until it is fixed.

If the old certificate has run out, the only journeys allowed are to or from a place of repair, or to a pre-arranged MOT test. If a dangerous defect was recorded, the car should not be driven at all until it has been repaired.

Retests: the three situations

What a retest costs depends on where the car is repaired and how quickly it comes back.

The listed items for the next-working-day free retest are the quick ones: lamps (but not headlamp aim), wipers and washers, wheels and tyres, mirrors, horn, registration plates, seatbelts, seats, doors, bonnet and boot, windscreen glass, the fuel filler cap, the brake pedal rubber, the tyre pressure warning system, the battery, wiring, and the vehicle identification number. A fail for brakes, suspension, steering, exhaust emissions or corrosion is not on the list, so bringing it back the next day still counts as the within-10-days case.

Working days exclude weekends and bank holidays. The 10 days run from the day of the failed test.

If you think the result is wrong

You can appeal a fail to the testing authority within 14 working days of the test, using the complaint form on gov.uk. Do not have the car repaired first, because the appeal is decided by re-examining it. You pay the test fee again for the re-examination, and it is refunded if the appeal is upheld.

What a fail means when you are buying the car

Every fail stays on the public MOT history, so a used car's record shows exactly what failed and when. Read it with these questions in mind:

• Was it fixed? A pass within a few days of the fail, or an item shown as put right during the test, means the defect was dealt with. A fail with no pass after it means the car may still have the defect.
• What failed? A blown bulb or a worn wiper blade is a different matter from corroded brake pipes or a broken coil spring. The explainer pages say what each wording means and how often it comes back.
• Does it repeat? The same item failing at several tests, or an advisory that turns into a fail the next year, tells you more about how the car has been kept than any single result.
• Is the fail rate normal for its age? Across the cars checked on this site, about one first attempt in five fails, and the rate rises steadily with age. The MOT pass rate by age page shows the figure for each year.

A fail tells you about the car's condition on one day. It does not tell you whether the car has finance owing, has been written off or has been stolen. The full history report covers those.