Scotland is the UK’s worst region for fleet vehicle offroad times while the North East is best, new figures from Epyx reveal.
The statistics, taken from the 1link Service Network platform used by fleets to manage service, maintenance and repair (SMR), shows that Scotland has the longest average fleet vehicle off-road (VOR) times in the UK at 2.38 days.
The North East sits at the other end of the scale; its average of 1.83 days between when a car or van enters a workshop and work is completed represents the shortest VOR wait.
Results for other regions are Northern Ireland at 2.37 days; London at 2.22; the East of England at 2.04; Wales at 2.01; the East Midlands at 2.00; the West Midlands at 1.99; Yorkshire and the Humber, and the South East, both at 1.96; the North West at 1.95; and the South West at 1.93.
The statistics – which cover the period January 2023 to October 2024 – show an improvement in the last year.
Tim Meadows, CCO at Epyx, explained: “We last assembled this data in mid-2023 and, at that point in time, there were 0.58 days between the worst- and best-performing areas of the country. That has now fallen slightly to 0.55, an improvement which chimes with a small improvement in overall average VOR times from 1.73 days to 1.66.
“What hasn’t changed since last year is the fact that VOR times diverge quite noticeably across the UK, something probably caused by several factors. They could range from local provision of SMR and corresponding fleet demand, through to increased need for SMR as fleets have gradually aged their fleet and rising specialist demand for vehicles such as EVs.”
When Epyx previously compiled this data in August 2023, the worst-performing area was Northern Ireland at 2.40 days, and the best was the North West at 1.82 days.
The latest data also shows that overall average VOR times have risen from 1.54 days in January 2020, before the impact of the pandemic began to be felt in the early spring of that year.
Meadows added: “High VOR times are undoubtedly a post-pandemic phenomenon that are having a very real impact on fleet operations. Much of our work with 1link Service Network in 2024 involves helping fleets to use our technology to minimise the amount of time that cars and vans are spending off the road.”
