UK driving test pass rates and centre statistics
Every DVSA driving test centre in the UK, ranked by its real pass rate. PassRates.uk turns the government’s quarterly test data into a clear picture of where people pass, where they struggle, and how long the wait is, so you can choose your test centre by the numbers instead of guesswork.
What the UK pass rate really tells you
Across every car practical test in Great Britain, just under half of candidates pass. The current national pass rate is 49%, a figure that has barely moved in a decade and sits close to the long run average DVSA has reported since records on this site begin in 2014. That single number, though, hides an enormous spread. The gap between the busiest urban centres and the quietest rural ones is the most important thing to understand about driving test statistics, and it is the reason a national average on its own tells you very little about the test you are about to sit. The full national breakdown shows how the headline has tracked over time.
At one end, busy city centres routinely pass somewhere between 30 and 45 percent of candidates. At the other, quiet rural and Scottish island centres reach 60 to 75 percent. That is not a difference in how strictly examiners mark, because the DVSA standard is identical nationwide. It is a difference in the roads. A city route packs in heavy traffic, multi lane roundabouts, frequent lane changes, cyclists, pedestrians and tight parking, so there are simply more moments where a serious fault can happen. A rural route has fewer decision points per mile, lighter traffic and more forgiving junctions. Route difficulty, traffic density, the complexity of local junctions, the sheer volume of tests a centre runs, and the mix of learners who book there all push the local number away from the national one. You can see the extremes laid out in the easiest centres ranking.
There is a second gap worth knowing about. The headline rate counts every attempt, which means a candidate who fails twice and passes on the third try contributes two fails and one pass. The first time pass rate, which isolates people sitting their very first test, currently runs at 49% nationally, only a fraction off the overall figure. At individual centres, though, the two can diverge by ten points or more, and that divergence is itself a difficulty signal. A centre with a healthy looking overall rate but a much lower first time rate is harder than it appears, because experienced retakers who already know the route are quietly lifting its average.
The centres at the top and bottom of the table
The centres below top and tail the national ranking, and the pattern is consistent: the highest rates cluster in quiet rural and island locations, the lowest in dense, heavily used urban centres. A low rate is not evidence of a harsher examiner. It reflects the route, the traffic and the mix of candidates who test there, all of which are tougher in a city than on an island. Read the two tables as a map of where the easy and hard routes are, not as a league table of examiner generosity. Every centre shown here clears our minimum test volume, so these are stable figures rather than the noise of a tiny sample.
See the complete tables: easiest UK centres and hardest UK centres.
How to read driving test pass rates
A pass rate is a simple idea that is easy to misread. Used well, it tells you something real about the roads around a centre. Used badly, it sends people on long drives to chase a number that means less than they think. Four points are worth holding in mind.
What the percentage actually measures
The figure is the share of car practical tests at a centre that ended in a pass over a given period. If a centre runs 2,000 tests and 960 of them pass, that is a 48 percent pass rate. It is a property of the tests conducted there, not a prediction of your personal odds, which depend far more on your own preparation and how well you know the local roads.
A low rate is not a harder examiner
Examiners everywhere mark to the same DVSA standard. When a centre passes only 40 percent, it is telling you the local routes are demanding, with the kind of traffic and junctions where serious faults happen more often. A 65 percent rural centre is not staffed by softer examiners, it simply sits on quieter roads.
First time versus overall
Because the headline counts every attempt, retakers who already know the route can flatter a centre. The first time rate strips them out and shows how genuine first timers fare. When the two diverge sharply, trust the first time figure as the better guide to a real first attempt.
Seasonality and sample size
Pass rates wobble quarter to quarter, and a centre that runs only a few hundred tests a year can swing several points on chance alone. That is why we aggregate multiple years for stable figures and exclude very small centres from the rankings. A 73 percent rate built on 50 tests is not comparable to a 50 percent rate built on 5,000.
Explore the guides
Plain-English guidance on passing first time, booking your test, choosing a centre and reading the numbers the way they are meant to be read. Start with the cornerstone guides below, or browse the full library.
How to pass first time
A complete guide to passing your UK driving test on the first attempt: preparation, common faults, route familiarisation, mock tests, and using pass-rate data wisely.
Read the guide
Easiest vs hardest
UK driving test pass rates: 33.4% (Wolverhampton) to 67.4% (Lerwick), a 34-point gap. Full ranking, why the gap exists, and what most learners miss.
Read the guide
How to book
Step-by-step guide to booking a UK driving test via gov.uk: requirements, fees, cancellations, and how to find earlier slots without paying third-party premium fees.
Read the guide
First-time pass rate
48.9% of UK candidates passed first time in 2024-25. How it compares to the 48.7% overall rate, and why the centre-level gap matters more than either figure.
Read the guideFind your local test centre
Pass rates are most useful once you narrow them to the centres you would realistically book. Start with your nearest large city or your part of the UK, then drill down to the individual centres and compare their routes, waiting times and headline rates side by side. The links below cover the busiest cities and every UK country.
Or browse every UK test centre and the full city directory.
Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest driving test centre in the UK?
The highest pass rates are almost always at small rural and island centres, where test routes are quiet, junctions are simple and traffic is light. Centres on the Scottish islands and in sparsely populated parts of mid Wales and northern England regularly top the table, with pass rates in the high sixties and low seventies. Whether the easiest centre is genuinely worth travelling to is a separate question. A quiet route teaches you less about the dense, multi lane driving you will actually do once you pass, and a long unfamiliar drive to the centre adds its own pressure on the day. Treat the ranking as a guide to route difficulty, not a shortcut.
Why do pass rates vary so much between centres?
The single biggest factor is the test route, not the examiner. A centre in a busy city sends candidates through heavy traffic, complex multi lane roundabouts, frequent lane changes, cyclists and pedestrians, and tight on street parking. A rural centre runs quieter roads with fewer decision points per mile. Examiners across the country mark to the same DVSA standard, so the spread you see reflects the difficulty of the roads around each centre and the mix of learners who test there. Centres used heavily by intensive course candidates, or by learners retaking after an earlier fail, also show different averages. None of that means one examiner is softer than another.
Are these pass rates official?
Yes. Every figure on this site is built from the DVSA quarterly statistical release published on gov.uk, which records the number of car practical tests conducted and passed at each test centre. That data is published under the Open Government Licence, which lets us reuse it freely as long as we attribute the source. We aggregate the raw quarterly records into per centre and national figures, but we do not adjust or estimate the underlying numbers. Where our headline rate differs slightly from a figure you have seen elsewhere, it is almost always because of the time window: we show the most recent annual period for the headline, and a longer multi year aggregate for context.
How often is the data updated?
The DVSA publishes new figures on a quarterly cycle, and we refresh the site against each release as it appears on gov.uk. Because official statistics carry a reporting lag, the most recent complete period usually trails the present day by a few months. Our coverage runs from 2014 through to the latest published quarter, so the long term aggregates draw on more than a decade of records. When you read a headline pass rate here, it reflects the most recent full annual period for which the DVSA has published centre level data, not a live or daily figure. Driving test statistics simply are not collected or released in real time.
Does it matter which test centre I choose?
It can, but less than good preparation. If two centres are a similar distance from home and one has consistently easier routes, booking the quieter one is a reasonable edge. The catch is that the quiet route also prepares you less well for real driving, and you still have to drive to the centre, often on roads you do not know. For most learners the bigger levers are lesson quality, hours behind the wheel, and familiarity with the specific roads around their chosen centre. Choosing a centre purely because its headline number is a few points higher, while ignoring waiting times and travel distance, rarely pays off. Use the ranking to inform the choice, not to make it for you.
What is a good driving test pass rate?
The national car test pass rate sits a little under half, so anything around the high forties is roughly average. A centre in the mid fifties or higher is performing above the national figure, usually because its routes are calmer than a typical urban centre. Rates in the low forties or below are common in dense cities and do not mean the centre is unfair, they reflect genuinely harder roads. Rather than chasing the single highest number, compare a centre against others in the same kind of area: a 50 percent city centre and a 65 percent rural centre can represent equally fair examining of very different driving conditions. Context matters far more than the raw percentage on its own.
Why is my local centre’s pass rate low?
A low pass rate at a city or suburban centre almost always comes down to the roads, not the examiners. Busy centres test candidates on congested routes with frequent hazards, demanding junctions and limited room for error, so more tests end in a serious or dangerous fault. The mix of candidates matters too: centres with high demand often see more learners taking early attempts or retaking after a fail, which pulls the average down. A low number is a signal that the local roads are demanding, which is useful to know, rather than a verdict on the centre. The same standard applies everywhere, so a pass earned on a hard route is, if anything, a sign of solid driving.
What is the first-time pass rate?
The headline pass rate counts every attempt, so a learner who fails twice and passes on the third try adds two fails and one pass to the figure. The first time pass rate isolates only candidates sitting their very first test, which is the number that actually matters if you have never tested before. Nationally the two figures are close, but at individual centres they can diverge by ten points or more. A centre that looks generous on the headline rate may be much harder for genuine first timers, because returning candidates who already know the route lift the overall average. If you are about to sit your first test, the first time figure is the more honest guide to your real odds.
Where these figures come from
Every number on this site is built from the DVSA quarterly statistical release published on gov.uk, the official record of how many car practical tests were conducted and passed at each test centre. That data is made available under the Open Government Licence, which permits reuse with attribution, and our coverage runs from 2014 through to the latest published quarter. We aggregate the raw quarterly records into per centre and national figures, taking the most recent complete annual period for the headline rate and a longer multi year window where a stable, less noisy figure is needed. To keep the rankings meaningful, any centre with fewer than 1,000 tests in the current period is held out of the leaderboards, since a handful of tests at a tiny centre can swing a percentage wildly on chance alone. We do not estimate, adjust or model the underlying counts. The full approach, including how the fallback windows work, is set out on our methodology page.