A group of bodyshop professionals held an inaugural meeting last week with the aim of cutting bureaucracy in the repair industry.

The meeting was chaired by John Driscoll, chairman of Bodyshop Management Systems, and included representatives from around 20 companies including Nationwide Crash Repair Centres, Pendragon, Impact Repair Centres, Citroën and one insurer, Norwich Union.

Driscoll believes work providers need to drop the ‘ifs and buts’, concentrate on underwriting, and allow repairers to do their job without being tied down by inflexible processes.

“How difficult is it to fix a car and send somebody the bill for doing so? We need to cut out all the other stuff that makes the process inefficient and drives up costs,” he says.

Delegates argued that engineers are avoidable if insurers trust their bodyshop networks to repair vehicles properly. The group will meet again in early 2007.