Thank you to everyone who took part in the Collision Repair Industry Census we had just over 650 responses which is roughly 20 percent of the industry.
This census excludes the largest groups AMA Group, MotorOne and Repairhub, we will incorporate their responses into a more detailed survey later in the year. We are grateful to all the industry bodies who sent the census to their customers: iBodyshop; PartsCheck; CrashZone; industry Facebook groups; Planning Plus; Car Craft Group; Fix Auto and the MTAs in each state.
See the latest issue for some analysis of the census, the digital issue is available from today.
The main thrust of this census was to identify skills shortages in the industry. Worryingly on the panel side there are less under 25 year olds than in paint and more over 50 year olds, which demonstrates the need for the industry to attract more apprentices on the body repair side of the business. That fact that 51% of businesses looking for staff are looking for panel techs says it all.
A whopping 68% of businesses are looking for staff and of those over half are looking for panel shop staff and 18% were looking for staff in each of the answer choices. It was even stevens between country and metro repairers who are looking for staff.
The vast majority are single site locations (85%), however 9% have 2-3 locations and 4% have 8-15 locations showing the trend for multi-sites.
Collision repair shops are deeply entrenched in their local communities with 41% over 31 years old with just 12% in the 0-5 year category.
In the diversification stakes only 14% offer retail mechanical servicing and just 27% offer windscreen replacement services. Just 17% don’t offer any extra services at all and 10% carry out ADAS recalibration.
It’s disappointing to see that nearly 42% haven’t carried out any training in the last 12 months as upskilling your technicians and support staff is essential to both repair current vehicle models safely and to develop your team. Finally 66% aren’t EV ready.
Full results can be seen below - a further more indepth survey is taking place shortly, an overall report will follow in PDF format.
What other services do you offer in addition to collision repair?
