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Consultancy offers new quality regime

TWO top managers from the AA’s axed garage approvals scheme have gone into business on their own as quality control consultants.

TEXT: Glyn Jones, previously team manager for AA Vehicle Inspections, and Mike Vening, previously operations manager for AA Vehicle Inspections, hope to “fill a void” in the market by helping garage businesses to institute quality management systems. Their company, Jones Vening, set up with £20,000 of their own money, is employing eight engineers made redundant by the AA.

Last November the AA made the decision to drop its garage approval scheme, launched in 1993, citing the need for a “change of direction involving a combination of industry endorsed schemes and better regulations”.

The scheme is to terminate by the end of this year.

Vening said the new programme would not be an approvals scheme such as was run by the AA, but rather a “monitoring scheme that will seek to set quality procedures”.

He said the programme was aimed at a “much wider audience” than the 2,495 garages served by the AA scheme. However, Jones Vening will initially target only big businesses; pilot schemes are underway with ATS, Kwik-Fit and Motability.

He said the Office of Fair Trading’s move earlier this month to launch an investigation into garage practices highlighted the trade’s image problem and the need for “raising quality standards”.

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