MOT Advisories Explained: What They Mean and Which Ones Matter

Open any used car's MOT history and you'll almost certainly find advisories: notes the tester added alongside a pass. Sellers tend to wave them away as "only advisories", while nervous buyers sometimes read them as proof the car is falling apart. The truth sits in between: a single advisory is usually nothing, but the pattern of advisories across several years is one of the most honest records of how a car has really been looked after.

This guide explains where advisories fit in the MOT defect system, which ones deserve your attention, and how to read them across a car's full history before you buy.

The five MOT defect categories

Since 20 May 2018, MOT testers no longer record a simple pass or fail. Every issue found is graded by severity, and the grade decides the result:

Advisories sit at the mild end of that scale, but they're also the category that leans most on tester judgement, which is exactly why they're worth reading carefully. Our guide to understanding MOT results walks through the other categories in more detail.

What an advisory actually means

An advisory says: this item passed today, but it's on a trajectory towards failing. Classic examples are tyres wearing towards the 1.6mm legal minimum, brake pads getting thin, surface rust spreading on the underbody, or a suspension bush starting to perish.

Three things follow from that:

• The car is fully road-legal. No retest is needed and nothing has to be repaired for the certificate to stand.
• Nothing has failed yet. If the item had already crossed the line, it would have been recorded as a Minor, Major or Dangerous defect instead.
• The clock is ticking. The tester recorded it because they expect it to become a defect, often by the next test.

The advisories that matter most

Not all advisories are equal. As a rule of thumb, anything connected to stopping, steering or structure deserves prompt attention, while cosmetic and consumable notes can usually wait for the next service.

Take these seriously:

• Tyres close to the legal limit, cracking, or wearing unevenly. Uneven wear can also point at suspension or alignment problems.
• Brakes: thin pads, worn discs, corroded brake pipes and lightly leaking calipers all get worse with use.
• Corrosion, especially on or near structural areas like sills, subframes and brake lines. Rust advisories compound: a car collecting them year on year is usually heading for a structural failure.
• Suspension: worn bushes, tired dampers, corroded springs. These often become Major defects two or three tests later.

Usually low-stakes:

• Faded or misted headlamp lenses.
• Light oil weeps described as "not excessive".
• Worn wiper blades, or stone chips outside the driver's line of sight.
• Notes recording that an undertray or trim panel limited what the tester could inspect.

For budgeting, rough independent-garage prices in 2026 look like this (premium and prestige cars often run double):

Recurring advisories: the buyer's early-warning system

A single advisory tells you almost nothing. Patterns across several years tell you a lot:

• The same item advised year after year (near-limit tyres flagged three tests running, say) means the fault was never properly fixed, just kept barely legal. That's the signature of cost-cutting maintenance, whatever the advert claims.
• A growing list (brakes, suspension and corrosion all advised at once, with more items each year) means the car is drifting towards a Major fail. Budget for real work, or negotiate hard.
• A suddenly clean sheet after years of advisories usually means a different test centre, and occasionally a genuine catch-up on overdue work. Receipts will tell you which.
• No advisories at all on an older car can be a well-maintained gem, or test-centre shopping. Cross-check against the mileage and the seller's story.

Advisories also predict fails: today's advisory list reads a lot like next year's failure sheet, and the same items dominate both. See our breakdown of the most common MOT failures.

Do you have to fix advisories?

Legally, no. There's no requirement to repair an advisory, no deadline, and nothing to prove at the next test beyond passing it. Practically, it's usually cheaper to act early: a £150 brake-pad advisory ignored for a year can become a £400 discs-and-pads job, and a corrosion note treated now costs a fraction of welding repairs later.

Two sensible exceptions: items already booked for replacement (a tyre advisory a month before a planned tyre change), and borderline notes that have sat unchanged for several years on a low-mileage car. Use judgement, but remember that if an advised item deteriorates past the legal line, the car stops being roadworthy regardless of the certificate, and an insurer can take that view too after an incident.

Reading advisories in a car's history

Every advisory ever recorded is stored centrally by the DVSA, and sellers can't edit or remove them. Run a free MOT history check and you'll see every test in date order (passes, failures, advisories and the mileage recorded at each visit), covering GB tests back to 2005 and Northern Ireland tests from 2017.

Read it oldest-first and watch how the car has been cared for. A history of prompt fixes (advisory one year, gone the next) is a good sign. Recurring items, growing lists and mileage that doesn't climb steadily are not; the mileage column in the same record is your first defence against a clocked car. The result shows the current expiry date too, and our guide to when your MOT is due covers the renewal rules around it.

The bottom line

Treat advisories as the tester talking directly to you. One-off notes on an otherwise tidy history are normal wear and tear. The same item advised year after year, or a list that grows with every test, tells you the car has been kept legal rather than maintained. Price it, or pass on it, with that in mind.