Garage Complaints Jumped 22 Percent, but Most UK Garages Have No Free Referee

The Motor Ombudsman took in 23,499 unique complaints from drivers in the first five months of 2026 alone, a 22 per cent jump on the same period last year. The rise was steep enough that the organisation has opened a second office in Liverpool and hired 17 extra staff just to keep pace with the backlog of garage and dealership disputes landing on its desk.

What most drivers do not realise until they need it: this free, independent complaints service only covers businesses that have voluntarily signed up to it. Roughly 7,500 garages, dealers, manufacturers and warranty providers are accredited nationwide, against 23,071 DVSA-authorised MOT test stations alone in Great Britain. If the garage that botched a repair or the dealer who sold a faulty car never joined, the Motor Ombudsman cannot touch that case at all.

Why Complaints Are Rising So Fast

Bill Fennell, Chief Ombudsman and Managing Director of The Motor Ombudsman, said the Liverpool hub was needed as demand for the organisation’s Alternative Dispute Resolution service kept climbing. The new office on Mann Island will host Case Administration staff, who gather evidence from both sides of a dispute, and Adjudication staff, who review that evidence and issue a decision.

The Motor Ombudsman’s own Knowledge Base saw 132,489 views in the first quarter of 2026, a 21 per cent rise on the previous quarter, a sign that more drivers are searching for help before or in the middle of a dispute rather than after it has already gone wrong. Combined workforce across London and Liverpool now sits at close to 90 people, up sharply from a much smaller team when the organisation started nearly a decade ago.

Fennell called the Liverpool expansion “a significant and exciting step forward” for the organisation, pointing to the wider pool of talent the new location opens up beyond London and the local jobs it creates in Merseyside. What his statement did not address directly is the accreditation gap sitting underneath all of that growth: an ombudsman service can only expand its capacity to help drivers whose garage or dealer chose to join in the first place.

What Accreditation Actually Gets You

The Motor Ombudsman operates four codes of practice covering new cars, servicing and repairs, vehicle sales and warranty products. A business has to apply, pay a fee and commit to the relevant code before it can display Motor Ombudsman accreditation. In return, customers of that business get access to a free adjudication process if a dispute cannot be resolved directly with the garage or dealer.

If a driver accepts the Ombudsman’s final decision, it becomes legally binding on the business, not on the driver. Reject it, and the driver keeps every right to take the matter to court, at their own cost and on their own timeline. For most drivers, that makes accreditation the difference between a resolution that costs nothing and a small claims court application that costs money and months.

The Gap Nobody Tells You About Until It Is Too Late

Accreditation is entirely voluntary. A garage, independent dealer or warranty provider can operate for decades without ever joining a code of practice, and nothing on the DVSA’s own MOT register tells a customer whether the business down the road is covered. Drivers routinely find the gap only after a repair goes wrong, when they search for how to complain and learn their garage simply is not a member of any scheme.

Franchised dealerships tied to a manufacturer are far more likely to be accredited, as many manufacturers require it as a condition of the franchise agreement. Independent garages, which make up the bulk of Britain’s roughly 23,000 MOT stations, join at their own discretion, and plenty never do. With 7,500 accredited businesses against a national base of tens of thousands of garages, dealers and repairers, the accredited slice is a minority, not the default a driver might reasonably assume it to be.

Where the 22 Per Cent Rise Is Actually Coming From

The Motor Ombudsman has not broken down the 23,499 cases by category publicly, but the organisation’s own reporting elsewhere this year points to used car sales, electric vehicle disputes and servicing complaints as the fastest-growing segments feeding into that total. A widening used car market, combined with more complex vehicles that are harder and more expensive to diagnose correctly first time, gives drivers more to complain about even before accreditation gaps are factored in.

That combination, more complaints chasing a system that only covers part of the market, is the real story behind the Liverpool hub. Extra staff speed up decisions for drivers whose business is covered. They do nothing for the drivers whose garage was never in the scheme to begin with.

How to Check Before You Book, Not After You Complain

The Motor Ombudsman publishes a searchable Garage Finder tool at businesses.themotorombudsman.org, letting a driver check accreditation status by postcode or business name before handing over keys or a deposit. It takes under a minute and costs nothing.

If a garage or dealer is not accredited, a driver is not without options, but the process gets slower and more expensive. Start with a written complaint to the business itself, keeping a clear paper trail of dates, faults and any repair quotes. If that fails, Citizens Advice can point toward the relevant trade body, and Trading Standards can be notified of a pattern of poor practice even where it cannot resolve an individual case. The final route is the small claims court, for amounts up to £10,000 in England and Wales, though a driver has to fund the claim personally and cannot recover a Motor Ombudsman-style free decision.

Before signing anything at a dealership or booking a repair with an unfamiliar independent garage, checking accreditation status takes less time than reading the terms and conditions. Complaints to the scheme are rising by more than a fifth year on year, so the businesses that have not joined are becoming a bigger blind spot for drivers with every month that passes.

What “Free” Actually Costs the Business, Not the Driver

Accreditation is not free for a garage or dealer to hold. Businesses pay an annual fee tied to their size and sector, and they commit to meeting the standards set out in whichever code of practice applies to their work, from clear pricing on repairs to specific timescales for responding to a complaint before it reaches adjudication. For a small independent garage running on thin margins, that fee and the compliance work behind it can be a real reason to stay outside the scheme altogether, even where the owner has no intention of treating customers unfairly.

That is part of why the accreditation gap persists even as awareness of The Motor Ombudsman grows. Joining is a business decision weighed against cost, and plenty of garages that have never had a serious dispute in years of trading see little reason to pay for cover they expect to never need. The driver booking a service at that garage has no way of knowing that calculation was ever made.

A Wider Pattern Across UK Ombudsman Services

The voluntary accreditation model used by The Motor Ombudsman is not unique to the motor trade. Energy, property and financial services all run comparable schemes where membership is compulsory by law, while others, including large parts of retail and home improvement, rely on businesses opting in the same way garages do. Consumer groups have argued for years that sectors dealing in expensive, safety-critical purchases such as cars deserve compulsory ombudsman coverage rather than a voluntary one, given how high the financial stakes are for an individual driver when a repair or a used car purchase goes wrong. No such change is currently planned for the motor trade, leaving the Garage Finder tool as the only practical way for a driver to know where they stand before a dispute ever begins.

Sources:

• TMO expands presence with addition of new hub in Liverpool – The Motor Ombudsman
• MOT test stations by town, every DVSA-authorised centre – MOTGuard