About PassRates.uk

What this site is

PassRates.uk is an independent reference for UK driving test pass-rate data. The site aggregates the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) quarterly statistical release into per-centre, per-city, per-region views, plus learner guides on how to interpret the numbers. It exists because the official DVSA spreadsheets are accurate but unwieldy, and the commercial driving-school sites that summarise them are usually optimised for booking lead generation rather than honest comparison.

What you will not find here: sponsored placements, paid rankings, lead capture, sign-up walls, or paid endorsements of any individual driving school. Every centre page shows the same DVSA-derived data, presented the same way, regardless of any commercial relationship. Standard programmatic display ads via Google AdSense run in non-personalised mode and only after you accept the cookie banner; affiliate links to relevant UK services (driving schools, learner insurance, theory products) may appear and are labelled inline. The full picture is on the disclosure page and the privacy policy.

Who runs it

PassRates.uk is built and maintained by Vikas Dulgunde, a London-based software engineer who built the site to make the DVSA's published pass-rate data searchable and comparable. The authority here is in the data engineering and transparent methodology, not in driving instruction. I have around six years of professional experience writing JavaScript and Node, with most of that time spent on data-engineering and analytics tooling. I am also currently doing an MSc at a UK university. I am not a DVSA examiner, not an Approved Driving Instructor, and not affiliated with any driving school or instructor network.

The driving-test substance on this site comes from authoritative public sources: the DVSA quarterly DRT statistical releases (DRT121, DRT122, DRT222, DRT322 series), the Highway Code as published on gov.uk, and the National Audit Office's December 2025 investigation into car driving test waiting times. Where this site quotes a specific fee, age, regulation, or pass-rate threshold, it is verifiable on a named gov.uk page within one click.

For corrections or data questions, email hello@passrates.uk , the inbox goes to me directly. See the contact page for SLAs and topic-specific addresses.

How this site is maintained

Articles are kept in step with the latest DVSA quarterly release: DRT122A for per-centre statistics and DRT121C/D for demographic breakdowns. The visible "Updated" date on each article reflects when it was last refreshed against the source data, not the date it was first published.

Editorial decisions, methodology, fact-checking, and content review are all my own work (see the byline above). Where the site cites a statistic, the calculation is reproducible from the raw DVSA releases linked on the methodology page. Every centre rate ultimately traces back to a row in a DVSA published dataset under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which means the same number can be re-derived by anyone who downloads the source release.

If you find a factual error, contact me and I will review and respond within 48 hours.

How the data is calculated

In short: pass rates are volume-weighted from the DVSA quarterly releases, and centres with thin current-period samples are held out of rankings so small numbers do not distort the order. Wait-time figures are modelled estimates, never booking guarantees.

The full version, with the source files, the dedup rules, the sample floor and the exact formulae, lives on the methodology page.

Editorial principles

The articles on this site follow a small set of rules:

• Every specific factual claim (fee, age, regulation, distance, weight limit) is verifiable on gov.uk.
• Wait-time figures are labelled as estimates with a clear methodology, never as booking promises.
• Centre names match the official DVSA register where possible. Where the dataset uses a stale variant or a temporary venue name, it is flagged.
• City and centre articles do not promote one centre over another except where the published DVSA statistics support it.
• Driving-school recommendations, where they appear, are clearly labelled as affiliate placements and never override the DVSA-derived rankings. We do not verify instructor quality at scale and never claim to.
• Articles are reviewed by date. Where a fact is time-sensitive (a fee, a regulation in flux), the article carries the date it was last reviewed against the current gov.uk page.
• Every guide is checked against the underlying DVSA data and the cited gov.uk sources before it goes live. The Last reviewed date on each guide is the date of that review.

What we do not cover

This site focuses on the practical and theory test, motorcycle Module 1 and 2, and the HGV/LGV categories where DVSA publishes per-centre data. It does not cover bus and coach licensing in detail because the per-centre data the DVSA publishes for PCV is sparse. It does not cover Northern Ireland car tests in the same depth as Great Britain because the DVA (NI's equivalent) publishes a smaller dataset; we link to DVA where relevant rather than guess.

Corrections

If you spot a factual error on any page, email hello@passrates.uk with the page URL and the issue. Corrections are made within a working week, with an updated "Last reviewed" date on the affected page.

For privacy or data-protection questions, email privacy@passrates.uk. See also the privacy policy.

Funding model

PassRates.uk runs on a small UK-region cloud server. Hosting and domain cost roughly a few pounds a month. The site is funded by standard programmatic display advertising (Google AdSense, in non-personalised mode and gated behind the cookie banner) and may also use affiliate links to relevant UK services (driving schools, learner insurance, theory test products). Ad revenue and affiliate commission strictly cover running costs and free up time to keep the data fresh.

The site does not run sponsored content, paid newsletters, or pay-for-ranking deals. We never accept money to alter the data, the rankings, or the methodology. For the full picture of what runs commercially on the site and how it is labelled, see the advertising and affiliate disclosure and the privacy policy.

Open data licence

The underlying DVSA pass-rate dataset is published by the UK government under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You can use the same data in your own projects under the same terms. The presentation and original analysis on this site (rankings methodology, narrative text, modelled wait-time estimates) are PassRates.uk's own work and are protected by copyright. See the terms of service for details.