The most common MOT advisories, and what they become if you ignore them

An advisory does not fail the car, but the same defects often turn up as fails next time. The full DVSA ranking, and how often each one gets acted on first.

MOT DATA · 5 min read

An advisory is not a fail, but it is not nothing either

Every MOT defect DVSA testers flag gets a severity grade: dangerous or major, which fail the car outright, or advisory, which does not stop it passing but goes on the certificate as something worth watching. Advisories are the biggest single category by volume: 44.8 million of the 74.4 million defects flagged across every 2024 first-time car test were advisories, 60.2 percent, against 28.4 percent that actually failed the car, the same DVSA test-item extract behind our most common MOT failures guide. Most drivers glance at their advisory list once a year and forget it. It is worth more attention than that, because the same defect descriptions turn up on both lists.

The full national ranking

As a share of every first-time test in 2024: tyre tread depth not in accordance with the requirements, 26.65 percent, by far the single most common thing DVSA testers note on any car. A tyre seriously damaged, 15.44 percent. A suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn, 13.37 percent. Brake disc or drum excessively weakened, insecure or fractured, 12.24 percent. A brake lining or pad worn below 1.5mm, 9.35 percent. Brake pipe damaged or excessively corroded, 6.19 percent. Fluid leaking excessively, 5.56 percent. A suspension component excessively damaged or corroded, 5.17 percent. A spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened, 4.73 percent. A shock absorber damaged or leaking, 3.91 percent. Tyres, brakes and suspension dominate the top ten, the same three categories that dominate the failure list below, just caught earlier.

The same items turn up as fails, later

This is the actual finding: the single most common MOT advisory, tyre tread depth, is also the second most common actual failure reason nationally, flagged as a genuine fail on 3.19 percent of all first-time tests. And the single most common actual failure reason of all, a worn suspension pin, bush or joint at 5.03 percent of tests, is the third most common advisory. These are not two unrelated lists. A tyre or a bush that gets noted as an advisory this year is a plausible fail next year if nobody replaces it, on the same car, for the same reason, at the next test. Nationally, the fail count for tyre tread depth (1,093,782) runs at about 12 percent of its advisory count (9,132,725), a rough sense of how much of a defect this common gets caught on the warning rather than left to become an outright fail.

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What this means reading a failure sheet or an advisory list

If you are looking at a car's last MOT and it passed with advisories on tyres, brakes or suspension, treat those the same way you would treat the equivalent item on a failure sheet: as a real, quantifiable cost that is coming, not a footnote. A Ford Fiesta's own advisory list, for example, is led by a worn stub axle swivel pin or bush, 7.1 percent of tests and 11.1 times the national rate for that specific item, a genuinely distinctive pattern for this model rather than the generic top-ten list above. Check the model's own advisory and failure sections on its Salvage Prophet page before you buy, not just the headline pass rate.

The salvage angle

On a car sold as an MOT failure or bought as salvage, the last advisory list, where you can get it, is a free hint at what is likely to fail next, on top of whatever the failure sheet already tells you. Tyres and brakes are cheap: budget a set of tyres and a brake refresh as routine on most salvage, the same as the failures guide already recommends. Suspension is the one to price carefully, because a bush or spring advisory today is the single most common actual failure reason on the whole test, and on an accident car it can mean a bent component rather than simple wear. Run the car through the Analyzer once you have priced the visible damage, and check the model's own failure and advisory lists for what is unusual about that specific model rather than the national picture.

Real MOT data for this model

• Ford Fiesta - 71.7% pass rate, avg 70,404 miles
• Vauxhall Corsa - 70% pass rate, avg 68,586 miles
• Volkswagen Golf - 77.1% pass rate, avg 91,380 miles

Related guides

• Electric cars get fewer MOT advisories, except on tyres - Suspension and brake advisory rates track almost exactly with each fuel's newer, lower-mileage fleet. Tyre tread advisories are the one item that does not.
• The most common reasons cars fail their MOT (2025 UK data) - One in four cars fails its first MOT. Here is exactly what they fail on, using the latest DVSA figures, and what each fault means if you are buying salvage.
• Why cars fail their MOT on lights and electrics (and what it costs) - Lamps and electrical faults are the single most common MOT failure at 10.36 percent of cars. What fails, why, and what it costs to fix on a salvage repair.