A NATIONAL standard for vehicle repairers, set by agencies such as Thatcham and the British Standards Institution (BSI), is urgently needed to protect fleets from shoddy workmanship.

Chris Oliver, director of AJC Wilson Bodyshops, said more needs to be done to ensure repairers have the equipment, materials and expertise to repair modern cars safely.

Oliver used a series of hypothetical scenarios to ask Acfo delegates who they thought owned the indemnity in a series of incidents involving badly-repaired cars.

He said: ‘Insurers are rewriting their supplier contracts and the Financial Services Authority is already looking down the supply chain to hold people to account.

‘Maybe now is the time to find out if your repairer has BSI certificates for welding or the specialised skills to replace an airbag.’