Weld the tail on the donkey
Yeah, that was precisely what I was looking for, but wasn't expecting.
There are options: Collate the totals for all the pass, fails, and advisories for X MOT stations in geographical area Y, divide for the mean, and visit the stations Z points outwith the mean. That can be done with a pencil and paper, or the basic spreadsheet skills of a schoolchild.
Alternatively, they could engage an indepth analytical study of varying metrics and potentialities, produce the modelling, testing... and well, you get the idea.
The cynic in me says it will be dispense with the high school graduate on work experience, throw £££££'s at AI to do the simplest of queries and call it a day. I doubt there will be anything more complicated than that.
I could think of some analytical use for a collated database of MOT test results - not least trends for vehicle failures & parts, and possibly, just possibly a use for AI to trawl the data and extrapolate, but that's just running a query on already available data, and I kinda thought that was a solved problem with existing tools.
I imagine the MOT database is already being scraped and crunched by the motor industry to *ahem leverage pricing rather than for QA. If you know that suspension arm bushes on VW's have a high failure rate, then that's high parts turnover and so you can weld a few extra quid on them for ££££'s - huzzah!
"Or we could improve the design?".... "Get out!"
Similarly for Gov emissions regulations- Here is the mean for MOT passes, here is the max emission currently allowed for class, reduce the max to just under the mean and weld on the Tax! - huzzah!
Urban planning perhaps? This area has a high failure rate for vehicles indicating a lower socio-economic class -redraw the electoral boundaries, and divert spending to the affluent area. Get the poor off the road and on the buses and trains... and while you're at it, cancel the buses and trains. "It might just be bad roads, perhaps we should resurface them?"... "Get out!"
tl;dr You're not failing enough vehicles for your area, those a rookie numbers, weld on some more.