Transport Agency extends free WOF offer for two months

Friday, 25 January 2019

Each year more than 4 million warrant of fitness inspections are carried out by 8000 inspectors. VINZ Christchurch site manager Billy Green explains a WOF check. (File video first published in 2019)

The Transport Agency is giving thousands of motorists with dodgy warrants of fitness another two months get free rechecks done on their vehicles.

As of January 9, about 20,000 vehicle owners had ignored requests to get free WOF retests, and of the 4000 who had done so, 60 per cent failed their first re-inspection.

The agency cannot legally compel owners to take advantage of the free WOFs, but it is trying to improve the response rate by extending expiry date of all unused WOF vouchers until March 31.

The recall was ordered after law firm Meredith Connell uncovered major deficiencies the agency's enforcement work with some garages using unqualified staff to do vehicle inspections and failing to do basic safety checks on lights, tyres, brakes and seatbelts.

* Slack car maintenance blamed for poor WOF recall response

Paying for free WOF rechecks and engaging a law firm to oversee its enforcement work has cost the transport agency more than $1m.

* Transport Agency bans use of more than 1400 tow bars

* WOF failings show NZTA has become a soft touch**

Meredith Connell was engaged late last year to review 850 outstanding compliance files and it has since taken 141 compliance actions.

Most involved transport service licence holders - both drivers and businesses - but about 40 vehicle inspectors and inspecting organisations also faced action, with 25 being suspended.

The majority of the garages and inspectors stopped from issuing WOFs were in Auckland, and the transport agency immediately began tracking down vehicle owners with the offer of free vouchers for retests.

The whole exercise has topped $1 million.

By early December the agency had paid close to $26,000 for WOF inspection vouchers redeemed by customers, and the bill for Meredith Connell's work was just over $1m by the end of November.

Faced with mounting criticism over the agency's performance, chief executive Fergus Gammie resigned and former Chorus head Mark Ratcliffe is temporarily heading organisation until it can find a permanent replacement