Driving test pass rates by test centre: does where you sit the test matter?

Half of the people who take a driving test in Great Britain pass it. The national rate for the year to March 2026 was 50.0%, the highest it has been for some years but still a coin toss. Underneath that average, though, individual test centres range from around 33% to around 70%, and the gap has been stable for a decade. So the obvious question is whether you should book your test somewhere with a better number.

The national picture

DVSA publishes pass rates every quarter, broken down by test centre, gender, age, and whether it was a first attempt. A few headlines from the most recent tables:

• The overall car pass rate was 50.0% for 2025-26, up from 48.7% the year before.
• Men pass slightly more often than women, about 51% against 49%. The gap is small and has narrowed.
• 17-year-olds pass at a higher rate than any other age group, and the rate falls steadily with age. Learners in their forties pass at roughly 40%.
• First-attempt pass rates run two to four points above the overall figure, because the overall number includes people on their third and fourth try.
• Scotland and Wales have higher average rates than England, and rural regions beat urban ones everywhere.

The easiest and hardest centres

The very top of the table is always small rural centres, mostly in the Highlands and Islands and rural Wales, where a few hundred tests a year take place on roads with no multi-lane roundabouts, no trams, and very few pedestrians. Centres such as Lerwick, Dorchester and Hexham have posted rates in the mid-to-high 60s in recent years, and a handful of tiny centres go higher still on samples too small to mean much.

The bottom of the table is just as consistent: large urban centres in London, Birmingham and the West Midlands. Wolverhampton, Chingford, Belvedere, Ashford in Middlesex and Erith have all recorded rates in the low-to-mid 30s. Bradford, which conducts more than 40,000 tests a year, sits under 37%.

Between the extremes, most people’s local centre falls somewhere between 42% and 55%, and the differences between neighbouring centres in the same town can be five or six points.

The full sortable table for every centre is below. Look at the number of tests as well as the rate: a centre with 60 tests a year and a 70% pass rate tells you less than one with 12,000 and 55%.

[Table: all car test centres, tests conducted, passes, pass rate, first-attempt pass rate, DVSA 2024-25]

Why the numbers differ

DVSA’s position is that the standard is the same everywhere, and there is no evidence that examiners in Wolverhampton mark harder than examiners in Lerwick. The differences come from the roads and the candidates.

Urban test routes contain more of the things that generate serious faults: complex junctions, bus lanes, cyclists, pedestrian crossings every few hundred metres, and roundabouts with lane markings that punish hesitation. The DVSA’s top reasons for failing are observation at junctions and use of mirrors when changing direction, and a route through central Birmingham gives a candidate perhaps forty opportunities to get those wrong against a dozen in Dorchester.

The candidates differ too. Urban centres have more retakes, more candidates who were pushed into a test by a long waiting list before they were ready, and more people learning as adults, all of which lower the rate.

Should you travel to an easier centre?

Sometimes, and only under conditions. The numbers reflect route difficulty, so a candidate who has learned on Wolverhampton’s roads and travels to a quiet centre 30 miles away will find the roads easier, provided they have practised on them. Turning up to an unfamiliar centre with no local practice removes the advantage; you are now doing a test on roads you have never seen, and that is worse than a hard centre you know.

The practical version of this is: if a centre within reasonable distance has a rate ten points or more above your local one, and your instructor is willing to teach you on its routes for the last month, it is worth considering. If the difference is five points, or you would have to switch instructors, it is not. Time is also a cost. With waiting lists at 20 weeks or more, a slot at the “easier” centre may be months later than a slot locally.

The other lever is private practice on the specific junctions your local examiners use. Instructors know these, and a parent who can supervise 20 hours around the test centre does more for the pass rate than any amount of centre shopping. Our guide to supervising a learner sets out the rules.

What a fail costs

The reason the pass rate matters is money and time. A retake is another £62 or £75, five to ten hours of lessons at £35 to £50 an hour to stay sharp, and, at the busiest centres, a wait of several months for the next slot. Our cost of learning to drive guide puts a failed first attempt at roughly £1,000 extra. That is the number to weigh when deciding whether you are ready, and what to expect on your driving test sets out what ready looks like.

Once you have passed, postcode matters again, in insurance this time; our guide to how your postcode affects car insurance explains why the same urban areas that have the toughest test routes also have the highest premiums.

Frequently asked questions

Which test centre has the highest pass rate?

In the latest full-year DVSA data the highest rates at centres with meaningful volumes were in small rural towns in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, in the mid-60s. Tiny centres post higher numbers on samples of under a hundred tests.

Which test centre has the lowest pass rate?

Wolverhampton and a cluster of outer-London centres including Chingford, Belvedere and Ashford (Middlesex) have recorded rates around 33% to 35%.

Can I book a test at any centre?

Yes. You can book at any centre in Great Britain, and you can change centre when you move a booking.

Are examiners stricter at some centres?

DVSA monitors examiner pass rates and investigates outliers. The published differences between centres are explained by routes and candidates, not marking.

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