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Testing times for Vosa
Page 10
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Lose the queues — Vosa's response
Commercial Motor has been putting your concerns direct to Vosa, while protecting the identity of anyone who requests us to do so. Here are some of the complaints we laid at Vosa's door, with its responses.
CM: Forward booking times (FBTs) are too long and this seems like a national problem. It still takes up to eight weeks to get a test in Veading or West London, for example.
"Vosa recently introduced a new IT solution to manage test bookings. Staff have now been given new instructions on booking tests where they fall outside our 15-day measure. This will show significant improvements in forward booking times around the country."
CM: Operators complain that certain stations have withdrawn the voluntary brake-test (VBT) facility.
"This year has seen a decrease (63,679 V BTs in 2006/07 as opposed to 71,018 in 2005/06). However, this has to be put in to context of a significant upward trend over the past .five years (39,669 V BTs in 2002/03). Increasing utilisation at stations has meant concentrating all our efforts on delivering the core functions of ta tory testing; this has left limited time 1`.or voluntary brake tests. We are encouraging the private sector to offer vollinlary tests."
CM: Booking retests continues to be a problem.
"Again, as above, we have reissued guidance on booking retests which will have a knock-on effect to retest slots."
CM: Operators used to be able to pay a supplement to have Saturday tests; this is no longer an option, meaning that work is lost by having to take a truck off the road.
"Where a particular station has an FBT outside the 15 days then out-ofhours testing will be offered without supplements. In all other cases testing will be carried out during normal hours Monday to Friday We will still, of course, continue to offer out-ofhours testing with a supplement."
CM: Many readers have complained they cannot get a response from Vosa phone lines. They have tried the central number and their local station numbers without success.
Vosa is aware there is a problem. We have a project under way to improve the performance of the contact centre. We are also in the process ofincreasing the number of agents by 30%."
CM: It has been suggested to us that Vosa test stations are significantly under-manned. Did a recruitment drive to transfer testers to roadside enforcement earlier this year make this worse?
"During the roll-out of Testing Transformation, the work that stations carry out was reviewed and changes were made to improve utilisation. In some areas, such as Single Vehicle Approval, this resulted in surplus staff transferring across to carry out new enforcement work. These were at PTO grade and not tester orVehicle Inspector /grades which work in test stations]."