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: paid rankings, altered data, lead capture, sign-up walls, or your personal data sold to anyone. What you may find is display advertising through Mediavine, which follows the choices you make in the cookie dialogue, and clearly labelled sponsored placements and collaborations with driving schools and other UK driving services. A sponsor can pay to be seen. Nobody can pay to move a centre up a ranking, change a pass rate, or alter the methodology, so every centre page shows the same DVSA-derived data, presented the same way, whatever commercial relationship exists. 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 and driving enthusiast who built the site to make the DVSA's published pass-rate data searchable and comparable. I build software products and analytical tools, and that is the work behind the rankings and the methodology here. I am also currently doing an MSc at a UK university. I am not a DVSA examiner or an Approved Driving Instructor, so the authority on this site comes from the official data and a transparent method, not from driving instruction, and no driving school has any say over either.

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 [email protected] , 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 use the official DVSA median waiting times where published (tables DRT122F and DRT121G) and a modelled estimate where a centre is not covered, 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.
• Sponsored placements, driving-school collaborations and affiliate links, where they appear, are clearly labelled 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]. See also the privacy policy.

Funding model

PassRates.uk is free to use. It is funded by display advertising through Mediavine's Journey programme, live since 11 August 2026, and by sponsored placements and collaborations with driving schools and other relevant UK driving services, with affiliate links where they fit. That is what keeps the site sustainable and lets me keep working on it.

Commercial relationships buy visibility, never editorial control. Sponsored and partner content is labelled where it appears, nobody can pay to alter the data, the rankings, or the methodology, and no personal data is sold. 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.