JUNE 2023 AFTERMARKET 15 www.aftermarketonline.net 2002. This provided a framework that detailed what a vehicle manufacturer had to make available to independent operators (i.e. all aspects of the aftermarket – diagnostic equipment, tools, spare parts, training, technical information etc.) on a nondiscriminatory basis when compared to what their main dealers could access and use. This was a good basis, but in legal terms it is based on Competition Law which was difficult to enforce if a vehicle manufacturer was deemed to be non-compliant. The legislators in Brussels (the UK was still part of the EU at this time) were made aware of the difficulties of an independent workshop trying to legally challenge a vehicle manufacturer (i.e. good in principle, difficult if not impossible in practice), so decided that as this was predominately a technical issue that it should become part of the vehicle type approval requirements. This allowed a much more detailed description of how access to a wide variety of requirements must be made available to independent operators and which in turn, could be checked by the type-approval authority, both at the time a vehicle was type-approved or later if a noncompliance was raised via an aftermarket trade association. This was introduced in 2007 as part of the Euro 5 Type Approval regulation and has been significantly updated in 2018, before coming into effect from September 2020. The MV-BER has also now been revised to better reflect the realities of the market and is being implemented from 1 June this year (so, as you read this, basically right now), but behind all of this legislation, Brexit has occurred. Although the Department for Transport (DfT) had issued two previous consultations to which various Aftermarket associations had responded, without being informed by the DfT, these associations learned between Christmas and New Year that a new UK Regulation had been implemented that came into force at 23.00 on 31 December 2022 (effectively 1 January 2023) as part of the UK government’s overall revisions of EU legislation that will still apply in the UK. This new Regulation (2022 No. 1273) was a 141-page list of detailed amendments to various pieces of legislation that refer to vehicle Type Approval. Serious concerns This was designed to help tidy up the quite complicated array of vehicle type approval requirements for vehicle manufacturers. However, for the aftermarket, there are some serious concerns. These range from the deletion of important references, such as the access to repair and maintenance information (RMI), as well as the security forum which created the SERMI scheme to provide standardised accreditation for independent operators to access antitheft related RMI from all vehicle manufacturers, to completely deleting EU secondary legislation. However, although this new Regulation retains the reference to the EU type approval regulation that came into effect in September 2020 (EU 2018/858), it does not reference what has subsequently been enacted in the EU to provide the greater technical details of ‘how’ the requirements must be fulfilled (secondary legislation), only the what’. In other words, the retained UK type approval regulation uses expressions such as “Manufacturers' obligations to provide vehicle OBD information and vehicle repair and maintenance information,” but without stating the process, costs, conditions or the detailed content of how this will be done. As another example, the legislation states: “Manufacturers shall also make training material available to independent operators and authorised dealers and repairers,” but again, not the details of how this would be done, so when trying to book onto a vehicle manufacturer’s training course perhaps no places exist for 12 months or more for independent repairers. Equally, the UK government has not provided any indication of what they may be considering to provide this further technical detail – and without this, independent operators will be increasingly controlled by what a vehicle manufacturer chooses to impose, ultimately restricting independence and competitiveness. Against the background of other Type Approval requirements for vehicle cybersecurity, embedded applications for diagnostics or prognostics for bespoke service and maintenance requirements (which are fully controlled by the vehicle manufacturers), the UK government needs to wake up and smell the coffee and listen to the needs of the UK aftermarket to ensure consumer choice for competitive vehicle repair and maintenance services are covered by detailed secondary legislation. xenconsultancy.com
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