The poorest neighbourhoods have three times as many MOT stations per person as the richest

Britain has about 22,000 MOT stations that test cars and small vans. That is one for roughly every 1,400 privately owned cars, or 7.3 stations per 10,000 cars. But that average hides a big spread, and the pattern isn't the one most people would guess. The poorest neighbourhoods have about three times as many MOT stations per person as the richest.

The headline figures

• About 22,000 MOT stations that test cars (class 4) across Great Britain, which works out at about 7.3 per 10,000 privately kept cars.
• Among local authorities, the figure runs from 0.8 in Westminster to 13.6 in Lincoln.
• In England's most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods there are 42 MOT stations per 100,000 residents. In the least deprived tenth there are 14.
• The most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods holds 13% of England's MOT stations. The least deprived tenth holds 4%.
• Across English local authorities, the most deprived fifth has 8.0 stations per 10,000 cars, against 5.9 in the least deprived fifth: about 35% more.
• Richer areas do have more cars under three years old, which don't need an MOT yet, but that explains only a small part of the gap: counting only cars that need an MOT, it narrows from 35% to 32%.
• Poorer areas have fewer cars per person (381 per 1,000 residents against 536), so stations per resident is about level across authorities while stations per car is not.
• Stations in wealthier areas are busier (11% more tests each than in the most deprived areas), which together with the new-car rule explains a little under half of the per-car gap.

Big cities aren't short of MOT stations

It's easy to assume the biggest cities are thin on garages. They aren't. Per car, Birmingham (7.3) and Manchester (7.5) sit right around the national average of 7.3, and Leicester and Nottingham are well above it.

Where there are fewest

The thinnest places are central London and some outer suburban and commuter areas around big towns. Westminster has just 3 MOT stations for around 37,500 private cars. Property is expensive there and many residents don't own a car, so drivers are probably served by stations just outside the borough.

Only local authorities with at least 25,000 privately kept cars are included.

Where there are most

The highest figures are in smaller cities and towns that probably serve a wide area around them (Lincoln, Norwich, Exeter) and in rural places where distances are long (Gwynedd, North Devon, the Scottish Borders).

Poorer neighbourhoods have more MOT stations

We placed every MOT station in England in its neighbourhood (an area of roughly 1,700 people), and ranked neighbourhoods by the government's Index of Multiple Deprivation. MOT stations are most common in the most deprived tenth, fairly even across the middle, and thinnest in the least deprived two tenths.

The link shows at local authority level too. Dividing authorities into five groups by their average deprivation:

This is a clear pattern, not a perfect one: plenty of deprived areas have few stations, and plenty of well-off ones have many. But across the country it holds.

Is it just that richer areas have newer cars?

A fair question: a new car doesn't need an MOT until its third birthday, so an area full of recent registrations needs fewer tests, and wealthier areas do tend to have newer cars. We tested it using the Department for Transport's count of cars by year of first registration.

It is true, but it's a small effect, and smaller than we expected: it is the obvious explanation, and it accounts for only a sliver of the pattern. Cars under three years old are about 11% of cars in the least deprived fifth of English authorities and 9% in the most deprived fifth. Across individual authorities the link between affluence and having more new cars is real (rank correlation 0.45), but the gap in new cars is only about 2 percentage points.

When we count only the cars that actually need an MOT, the gap between the most and least deprived fifth narrows from 35% to 32%. So the new-car rule explains a small slice of the pattern, and the main finding stands. The result is similar however we treat the cars registered in 2023 (32% to 33%).

It matters more for individual places. Across authorities, those with more new cars tend to have fewer stations per car, and in a statistical model that includes both, deprivation and share of new cars each still count (22% of the variation between authorities is explained by the two together, against 15% for deprivation alone). Kensington and Chelsea has one of the highest shares of new cars in the country, 15%, and about 2 MOT stations per 10,000 cars. Leicester and Norwich have among the lowest, 5.5%, and some of the highest station counts.

Do wealthier areas have fewer cars per person?

Another possibility is that richer areas own fewer cars per head, so they need fewer stations. For most of the country it's the other way round. In England, authorities in the least deprived fifth have 536 private cars per 1,000 residents and those in the most deprived fifth have 381. The exception is inner London, where boroughs such as Westminster, Hackney and Islington have only 130 to 180 cars per 1,000 residents.

This changes how the earlier result should be read. Per resident, MOT stations are spread about evenly across local authorities (32 per 100,000 in the least deprived fifth, 31 in the most deprived). The per-car gap exists largely because people in poorer areas own fewer cars. Within an authority, though, stations still cluster in poorer neighbourhoods, which is what the neighbourhood figures above show.

Are stations in wealthier areas bigger?

The register counts stations, not capacity. A large garage with six test lanes shows up once, exactly like a one-bay workshop. The DVSA register doesn't say how many lanes or testers a site has, so we looked at how many tests each station carries out instead, using DVSA's 2025 test results, which record the postcode area of the test station.

It turns out the average station in a wealthier area does more tests. Across England's postcode areas, grouped into five by deprivation:

Stations in the least deprived fifth carry out about 11% more tests than those in the most deprived fifth. The range is wide, and not only a matter of wealth: stations in Slough, St Albans, Watford and Kingston upon Thames average over 2,300 car tests a year, against about 1,100 to 1,300 in Galashiels, Kirkwall, Llandrindod Wells, Dumfries and Carlisle. Chains don't explain it: operators with ten or more sites are 7% to 8% of stations in every fifth.

If we weight every station by how busy its postcode area's stations are, the gap in estimated testing capacity per car falls from 35% to about 22%.

Putting it together

Between them, the three-year rule and busier stations account for a little under half of the gap. Most of that comes from station size. Poorer areas still have more testing capacity per car, and that remains unexplained. These adjustments are estimates: the test counts are by postcode area, not by individual garage, and the vehicles tested aren't all privately owned cars.

What else might explain it?

About half of the gap is still unexplained. The data can't tell us what accounts for it. These are the explanations we think are worth looking at, not findings:

• Older cars generate more work. Older cars fail more often and come back for retests. But cars aged 13 or more are about a third of the fleet in every fifth of authorities (32% to 34%), so very old cars don't explain it either.
• Space and labour cost less in poorer areas. Where rents and wages are lower, a garage can afford to run with spare capacity, so more small stations stay in business. Where space and labour cost more, each station needs more tests to pay its way, and fewer survive. That fits the busier stations we found in wealthier areas, but we haven't tested it against rent or wage data. Garages also cluster on industrial estates and in cheaper parts of town.
• Newer cars may be tested at dealers. Cars past their third birthday in wealthier areas may be more likely to be serviced and tested at a main dealer, whose MOT bays count as one station like any other garage. We haven't tested this.
• Where a station is isn't where its customers live. People often drive past the nearest garage to a cheaper or more trusted one.

What it means if you're looking for an MOT

Garage List shows the MOT stations near you, and the order never depends on payment. Compare opening hours, whether they test your type of vehicle and what they charge. In the sparsest areas, such as central London, it's worth looking a little further afield.

See every local authority

How we worked it out

MOT stations. We counted every station on DVSA's register of active MOT test stations (published on GOV.UK, as at October 2026) that is approved to test class 4 vehicles: cars, taxis and light vans up to 3,000kg. Of 22,118 class 4 stations, 21,638 could be placed. Each station was placed in its local authority and neighbourhood from its postcode, using ONS postcode data. The other 480 (about 2%) have a postcode we couldn't match and are left out of the per-car and deprivation figures. Counts are of stations, not testing bays or testers, so a large dealer counts the same as a one-person garage.

Cars. We used the Department for Transport's count of licensed cars at the end of June 2026 (table VEH0105), keeping only privately kept cars. Company-registered cars are left out because fleets and leasing firms register huge numbers of cars in a few places that have nothing to do with where they're driven. Windsor and Maidenhead, for example, has 415,800 company-registered cars against 82,800 private ones.

New cars. To test the effect of the three-year rule we used the DfT's table of licensed cars by local authority and year of first registration (table VEH9901, end of June 2026), again private cars only. Cars first registered in 2024, 2025 or 2026 are counted as not needing an MOT, plus half of those registered in 2023, since the table gives the year but not the month. Counting none or all of the 2023 cars changes the results only slightly. We compared English authorities in five groups by average deprivation score.

Station size. We used DVSA's anonymised MOT test results for 2025 (published on data.gov.uk). We counted class 4 tests (normal tests and retests that ended in a pass, fail or pass after rectification) by the postcode area of the test station, about 38.6 million tests, and divided by the number of class 4 stations in the same area on the register. Postcode areas are the first one or two letters of a postcode, so there are only about 120 of them in Great Britain; we compared the 95 that are at least 90% in England, grouped into five by the average deprivation of the authorities their stations are in. For the capacity estimate we gave each station the average tests per station in its postcode area, so it picks up differences between areas but not between garages. Cars per head use the mid-2022 population estimates published with the deprivation index. Chains here means operators with ten or more registered sites.

Deprivation. We used the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, the government's official measure of relative deprivation for each neighbourhood in England. Wales and Scotland have their own separate indices that can't be compared with England's, so the deprivation analysis covers England only. The stations-per-car table covers all of Great Britain. Local authorities with fewer than 10,000 privately kept cars (the Isles of Scilly and the City of London) are left out of the averages. Deprivation tenths use the 2021 neighbourhood areas and mid-2022 population estimates published with the index. Authority groups use each authority's average deprivation score.

Limits. This shows where stations are, not how good they are or how busy. A station near a boundary serves drivers on both sides of it. The register is a snapshot, and stations open and close all the time.