That’s often the case, or for a smaller garage they will do (if you ask for it) a pre-inspection/service & then take it somewhere else to be tested. AFAIK It’s allowed to be driven on the road without a valid MOT if it’s on the way to or from an appointment at a testing centre, and a retest is free.

As others have said, if your VMs are Linux, set up unattended_updates and forget about it.

If your VMs are windows, then Action1 is free up to 200 clients, it does need an agent installed, but that auto updates too.