DVSA Data

Driving Test Pass Rates: 34% to 70% Across UK Test Centres

By DriveSidekick  |  19 October 2026  |  4 min read  |  Source: DVSA driving test statistics (DRT121A, DRT122A)

The national car driving test pass rate has crept up over the past few years. The official DVSA figures for the 2025 to 2026 financial year show 1,998,621 car tests conducted and 1,000,043 passed, a pass rate of 50.0%. That compares with 48.7% in 2024 to 2025 and 47.9% in 2023 to 2024. The first quarter of the current year (April to June 2026) is provisionally higher again at 51.3%, from 543,773 tests.

Those are national averages, and averages hide a lot. The DVSA also publishes pass rates for individual test centres, and the spread between them is wide enough to be worth a closer look.

The range between centres

For April 2025 to March 2026, we looked at the 260 centres that conducted at least 1,000 tests (a cut-off we chose, to avoid reading too much into small numbers). The median centre passed about 51.2% of candidates, and 151 of the 260 sat at or above 50%.

The lowest pass rates were in Wolverhampton (34.3% from 11,561 tests) and Wednesbury (35.0% from 7,508 tests), followed by Barking (Tanner Street) at 36.3%, Dunfermline (Vine) at 36.4% and Featherstone at 36.4%.

The highest were Melton Mowbray (69.7% from 1,984 tests), Barrow in Furness (69.6% from 1,699 tests) and Dorchester (69.0% from 4,353 tests). Kendal (Oxenholme Road) came next at 65.1%.

That is a gap of roughly 35 percentage points between the lowest and highest centre in the same year, under the same marking standard.

What the data does not say

It would be easy to read this as "some centres are harder", and that may be part of it, but the data does not show it. A pass rate reflects who is taking tests as much as where. Candidate mix, how many attempts each person has already had, local road layouts, traffic, and the share of tests taken in a manual versus an automatic car could all play a part. The DVSA's own notes caution that figures based on low numbers of tests are not statistically robust, which is why we left out the smallest centres.

It looks more like a pattern than a quirk, though. The two lowest centres, Wolverhampton and Wednesbury, are neighbours in the West Midlands and both sat in the bottom group the year before (33.4% and 36.4% in 2024 to 2025). Dorchester also stayed near the top, moving from 66.7% to 69.0%.

Year-on-year movement

Compared with 2024 to 2025, 169 of the 257 centres with comparable figures saw their pass rate rise and 88 saw it fall, with a median change of about 1.2 percentage points. Some centres moved much more. Workington went from 48.3% to 61.9%, while Monmouth fell from 61.2% to 51.0%. Swings that large at a single centre are worth treating with caution, as one year of results can be influenced by changes in examiners, staffing or candidate numbers.

What this means for learners and instructors

A centre's pass rate is a reasonable thing to know about, but it is a poor predictor of any individual's result. The data suggests the more useful preparation is the ordinary kind: getting familiar with the roads around your centre, and practising the manoeuvres and junctions you are likely to meet. Candidates at lower-pass-rate centres are not doomed, and those at higher-pass-rate centres still need to prepare.

If it helps, DriveSidekick publishes free GPX practice routes for nearly every UK test centre. You can see the figures for your own centre on our stats page, or look at the centre pages for Wolverhampton and Dorchester and their free routes at Wolverhampton and Dorchester.

Data: DVSA, Car driving test data by test centre (gov.uk). Figures are for car tests (categories B and B1). The 2026 to 2027 quarter is provisional.