UK Driving Test Pass Rates by City: 12 Compared

Bristol has the highest UK city volume-weighted average pass rate at 52.8 percent across its 4 aliased centres in 2024-25, narrowly ahead of Cardiff at 51.3 percent and Leeds at 50.2 percent (with only 2 aliased centres). All three sit above the UK national average of 48.7 percent. The structural drivers are quieter suburban routes, narrower within-city spreads, and a higher share of peri-urban centres relative to dense urban cores. Leeds carries a small-sample caveat (only 2 aliased centres in the dataset).

Newcastle has the lowest aliased-city average at 40.7 percent across its 4 active centres in 2024-25, with Glasgow trailing closely at 41.3 percent across 7 centres and Liverpool at 42.9 percent across 9 centres. The structural drivers at the bottom-band centres (Glasgow Shieldhall 37.7, Glasgow Anniesland 40.8, Gateshead 37.4, Speke 38.6, all 2024-25) are very high traffic density, complex roundabouts and box junctions per mile, and dense pedestrian and cyclist presence on typical test routes. The 12.1 percentage point gap between Newcastle at 40.7 percent and Bristol at 52.8 percent is the largest pairwise gap between aliased UK metros in 2024-25.

Manchester (47.9 percent volume-weighted across its 23 aliased centres) sits 5.0 percentage points above Liverpool (42.9 percent across 9 aliased centres) in 2024-25. The gap is structural rather than driven by candidate preparation: Manchester benefits from strong suburban centres (Bolton (Manchester) at 56.7 percent, Bredbury (Manchester) at 54.2 percent, both 2024-25) that lift the average, while Liverpool has a higher share of dense urban centres (Norris Green (Liverpool) at 38.7 percent, Speke (Liverpool) at 38.6 percent, both 2024-25). Both cities sit below or around the UK national average of 48.7 percent. See the manchester vs liverpool driving test guide for the centre-by-centre breakdown.

Not solely for the test. The city pass rate gap is 12.1 percentage points across the top and bottom aliased UK metros (2024-25), which equates to roughly £35 in expected DVSA fees and 4 to 6 weeks of additional learning time. That is not a number that justifies relocating, but it can justify booking a test in a different city if you have ties (university, family) that put you within 90 minutes of a higher-rated centre. The should I travel for easier test guide covers the travel trade-off framework. Most candidates achieve more by choosing the right centre within their home city.

Wait times are set centre by centre, not city by city, but candidates in dense urban cities face longer waits because their nearest catchment includes high-demand centres with multi-month backlogs. Top-ranked cities by pass rate sometimes have shorter waits at their suburban centres but longer waits at the highest-pass-rate centre specifically; the highest-pass-rate centre in a metro is usually also the most-booked. Use /tools/wait-time-finder for live city-by-city wait times before booking.

Use /tools/pass-rate-finder with your postcode to see your 6 nearest centres ranked by 2024-25 pass rate. Within-city spreads in 2024-25 range from under 2 percentage points (Bristol, small N) to 22.5 percentage points (London); the right centre is rarely the nearest. For a city-by-city overview, see the driving test passing rates UK cities guide. For city-specific deep dives, see the easiest test centre guides for London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Sheffield, and Newcastle. The within-city spread is typically larger than the city-versus-city gap in big metros, so the within-city choice matters more.

Three structural reasons emerge from the 2024-25 release. First, Bristol and Cardiff have narrower within-city spreads and a higher share of peri-urban centres compared to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Second, the Glasgow set is dominated by Shieldhall (37.7 percent, 2024-25), Anniesland (40.8 percent, 2024-25) and Baillieston (44.4 percent, 2024-25), all dense urban centres with multi-lane roundabouts; the Edinburgh set is only 2 centres so its average is volatile. Third, both Glasgow and Newcastle metros run inner-city test routes with higher complex-junction densities. The English southwest cities benefit from a more even mix of urban and suburban centres in their aliased sets.

The underlying centre-level pass rates come from DVSA DRT122A annual statistics published under Open Government Licence v3.0; they are accurate to one decimal place and updated each autumn. City averages are volume-weighted across all centres aliased to the city via OSM displayName matching (via the city alias matching used on the site), which is a defensible aggregation but does smooth over the within-city spread (under 2 to 22.5 percentage points typically). Cities with small aliased centre counts (Leeds, Edinburgh, both 2 centres) carry higher year-on-year volatility. The city average is a useful starting point but a bad personal forecast; the relevant number is the 2024-25 pass rate at your booked centre. Use /tools/pass-rate-finder for centre-level data.