Driving Test Centres in Shropshire: 4 DVSA Sites Ranked
4 DVSA driving test sites across Shropshire, part of England. Car pass rate 53.5% (2024-25 DVSA data), UK car average 48.7%.
DVSA data last updated June 2026
About Shropshire
Shropshire, England runs 4 DVSA driving test sites. Ludlow, Oswestry and Harlescott anchor the catchment, and the wider network has logged 116.3K car tests in the public DVSA release. The county's volume-weighted car pass rate is 53.5% (2024-25 DVSA data), set against the UK figure of 48.7%.
Shropshire runs 4.8 pp above the UK car pass rate (2024-25 DVSA data). The pattern across most counties is similar, the busiest centres in the larger towns tend to under-perform the quieter centres in surrounding districts. Use the rankings below to see where individual centres sit, not just where the county car average lands.
The headline spread within Shropshire sits between Ludlow (59.6%) at the top of the league and Shrewsbury (49.2%) at the bottom, a gap of 10.4 percentage points. Spreads of 10 to 15 percentage points within a single county are common, the route a centre uses matters far more than the county boundary.
Local context: Shropshire
Shropshire's centre network splits cleanly into two sub-regions that test materially differently. The Shrewsbury catchment (Shrewsbury at 49.2% on 5,712 tests in 2024-25, plus the rural Ludlow centre at 59.6% on 3,529 tests) draws from the historic county town and the surrounding agricultural belt south of the A5. The Telford catchment (Telford at 43.9% on 5,663 tests in 2024-25, technically in the unitary authority of Telford and Wrekin rather than Shropshire proper) draws from the New Town's planned-grid road network and the M54 commuter corridor. The 15.7-percentage-point gap between Ludlow at the top and Telford at the bottom (all DVSA 2024-25 financial year) is one of the widest within-county spreads in the West Midlands region.
What drives the Shrewsbury vs Telford difference is structural rather than examiner-related: Shrewsbury and Ludlow test on market-town and rural-A-road routes (the A488 toward Bishop's Castle, the A49 toward Hereford, the medieval-pattern streets of Shrewsbury town centre), which tend to throw up fewer fault-generating features than Telford. Telford routes use the New Town's grid pattern with multiple roundabout interchanges and the A442 dual carriageway, which produce more demanding manoeuvres in the same test. Oswestry (55.6% on 1,660 tests in 2024-25) sits on the Welsh border and tests largely on cross-border B-road routes, among the gentlest route environments in the Shropshire network.
For Shropshire learners specifically, the centre choice usually reduces to two questions. First, can your instructor cover both the Shrewsbury and Telford route environments, or only one? Most Shropshire ADIs specialise in one of the two sub-regions and lose route familiarity if they cross over. Second, do you have access to a rural-A-road practice environment for Ludlow or Oswestry? The 10-percentage-point pass-rate advantage at the rural centres is real but reduces sharply for learners whose practice has been exclusively urban Telford. The [easiest UK centres ranking](/rankings/easiest) is the right list to consult once those filters narrow the field.
Top 5 highest pass rates in Shropshire
All test centres in Shropshire
Sorted by pass rate, centres with fewer than 1,000 current-period tests appear at the end.
Shropshire driving test: common questions
What is the average driving test pass rate in Shropshire?+
The car driving test pass rate across Shropshire is 53.5%, 4.8 points above the UK average of 48.7%. It is a volume-weighted figure from the 4 test centres in the county with enough current tests for a reliable rate.
Which Shropshire test centre has the highest pass rate?+
Ludlow has the highest current car pass rate in Shropshire at 59.6%, ahead of Oswestry on 55.6%. Pass rates reflect the routes and traffic a centre tests on, not just how candidates drive.
Which Shropshire test centre has the lowest pass rate?+
Among the county's busier centres, Shrewsbury currently has the lowest car pass rate at 49.2%. A lower rate usually points to tougher, busier test routes rather than stricter examiners.
How many driving test centres are there in Shropshire?+
Shropshire has 4 DVSA driving test centres, with sites around Ludlow, Oswestry, Harlescott. Each centre's full pass-rate history, waiting time and demographic breakdown is linked above.
Is it easier to pass your driving test in Shropshire?+
On average a little, yes: the 53.5% county figure sits just above the national 48.7%. The bigger factor is the spread between centres, currently 49.2% to 59.6%, so which centre you book matters more than the county itself.
Where does the Shropshire pass-rate data come from?+
The figures come from the DVSA's quarterly car practical test statistics, the official UK government release. We only rank centres with at least 1,000 current-period tests, so a small sample never produces a misleading rate.