While in the South of Ireland the NCT Service appears to have largely cleared it test backlog caused by staffing shortages and Covid, in Northern Ireland motorist continue to face very long waiting times for tests, something that is impacting on independent garages. 

It appears the main issue is that capacity is not meeting demand for tests and that new test centres are not coming on stream quickly enough. For example a test centre in Antrim was due to open this year, but has now been delayed until 2025. Meanwhile a new centre in South Belfast will open later this year, but it is already two years behind schedule. 

Garages say that many motorists are unaware of the test backlog and are having to drive cars that may have safety issues. 

To help clear the backlog test centres are operating in evening and on Sundays, but garages point out that for them to take a customer’s car for testing in these circumstances require expensive overtime payments.