UK Driving Test Pass Rates 2024-25: Which 10 Centres Improved Most?

#The national picture in 2024-25

In 2024-25 the DVSA conducted 1,836,558 practical car tests across the UK, of which 893,609 resulted in a pass. That gives a national pass rate of 48.7%, up 0.8 percentage points on the 47.9% recorded in 2023-24. The improvement is real but modest: the long-run average since the current marking system was introduced sits around 47 to 49%, and a single year's shift of under one percentage point is within normal variation. What matters more is the spread beneath the headline.

To compile the data here, each centre needs at least 1,000 tests in 2024-25 (the current statistical threshold used across the passrates.uk rankings pages) and at least 200 tests in 2023-24 to give a meaningful prior-year figure for comparison. That leaves 261 centres with a statistically defensible year-on-year comparison. Of those, 138 (53%) improved by more than half a percentage point, 84 (32%) fell by more than half a point, and 39 (15%) were broadly flat. The distribution is skewed slightly toward improvement, consistent with the national rise.

#The 10 biggest risers in 2024-25

Monmouth tops the table with a 12.6-point rise from 48.6% to 61.2%, across 1,407 tests. That is a large move for a centre of that size and puts it well above the national average for the first time in recent years. Wrexham (9.7 points, 47.1% to 56.8%, 3,942 tests) and Blackpool (8.8 points, 40.8% to 49.6%, 6,271 tests) take second and third. Bangor in North Wales saw a 8.3-point lift to 64.1%, making it one of the highest-rate centres in the country. Erith (London) came fifth, gaining 7.9 points to reach 49.3% across nearly 5,000 tests.

The remaining positions in the top ten show further Welsh names: Pembroke Dock (5.8 points, 52.1% to 57.9%), Barry (5.7 points, 56.1% to 61.8%), and Wallasey on the Wirral (7.0 points, 42.6% to 49.6%). Launceston in Cornwall completed the set at 6.4 points. Mill Hill (London) was the only Greater London centre in the top ten, gaining 5.8 points to reach 51.1% across 8,688 tests, one of the higher-volume improvements in the list.

#Why Welsh centres dominated the improvements

Five of the top ten rising centres are in Wales (Monmouth, Wrexham, Bangor, Pembroke Dock, Barry), with a sixth (Wallasey) on the border with North Wales. A seventh, Rhyl, sits in position eleven at 5.5 points. This clustering is not a coincidence, though it does not have one single cause. Welsh driving test centres typically run routes through smaller market towns and rural roads, which carry lower ambient traffic than equivalent English suburban centres. When external pressures on those routes ease (construction projects finishing, road layout changes bedding in, changes to local traffic patterns), pass rates at smaller centres can move by more than at high-volume urban ones simply because the test population is smaller and a handful of easier-condition months can shift the annual figure noticeably.

• Smaller test volumes mean a good run of months has a larger proportional effect on the annual pass rate.
• Welsh test routes often pass through market towns with predictable traffic rather than dense commuter networks.
• Bangor, Wrexham and Pembroke Dock all sit in areas where route infrastructure has been relatively stable.
• The absence of the school-run-and-commuter congestion mix common in English suburban centres reduces the variable-difficulty component of testing.

None of this means Welsh tests are straightforwardly easy: Bangor at 64.1% and Barry at 61.8% are well above the UK average, but a significant share of that reflects genuinely quieter conditions rather than a marked-down examiner. Candidates preparing at these centres typically get a good mix of open road driving, which is part of why centres in Wales consistently cluster toward the upper half of the national rankings. The why rural test centres are easier guide goes into the structural reasons in more detail.

#The 10 biggest fallers in 2024-25

Galashiels in the Scottish Borders fell the furthest, dropping 9.8 percentage points from 58.9% to 49.1% across 2,193 tests. Stirling followed at 8.7 points down (47.4% to 38.7%), which is a particularly steep fall given the centre now sits among the lowest pass rates in Scotland. Chorley in Lancashire recorded the third-largest drop at 7.9 points (56.2% to 48.3%, 5,257 tests). Workington fell 6.3 points (54.6% to 48.3%) and Darlington recorded a 5.9-point decline (55.1% to 49.2%) across a substantial 6,828 tests.

The remaining positions mix Scottish and northern English centres. Inverness (Longman Drive) dropped 4.5 points (50.4% to 45.9%) and sits alongside Galashiels as the biggest Scottish fallers. Bradford (Thornbury) lost 4.3 points across 7,107 tests, one of the higher-volume drops in the table. Llantrisant in South Wales fell 4.3 points (54.9% to 50.6%) across 8,554 tests, making it the only Welsh entry among the fallers and the highest-volume centre in either top-ten list.

#Why Scottish centres had the harder year

The pattern in the fallers column is notable: Galashiels, Stirling, and Inverness (Longman Drive) all sit in Scotland. Scottish driving test centres do not publish their route lists as fully as English ones, but the general picture from the DVSA is that Scottish centres disproportionately include sections of single-track road, rural junctions, and roads with higher ambient speed limits. These are harder condition variables than a typical suburban English test. A year in which road conditions are more demanding than average (more adverse weather, more road works, more traffic from seasonal tourism) will tend to hit smaller-volume rural Scottish centres harder than busier urban English ones.

Stirling's drop to 38.7% is the most dramatic single figure in the 2024-25 dataset. At that rate, fewer than two in five candidates are passing. Stirling has historically run below the Scottish average (itself slightly below the UK average), but 38.7% puts it in the bottom tier nationally. The centre has 4,111 tests in the year, enough to make the figure statistically credible rather than a small-sample artefact. Candidates booking at Stirling should note the current rate alongside the broader Scotland region overview and factor in that the should I travel for an easier test guide applies here as much as anywhere.

#What drives year-on-year pass rate swings

A 12-percentage-point move like Monmouth's, or a nearly 10-point drop like Galashiels's, is large enough that the most common explanation is not one thing but several factors moving in the same direction at the same time. Year-on-year pass rate changes at a single centre tend to reflect some combination of route changes, examiner turnover, local traffic pattern changes, and the composition of the candidate pool.

• Route changes: the DVSA refreshes test routes periodically and new routes have a bedding-in period where examiners are calibrating difficulty and candidates are less likely to have driven them in lessons.
• Examiner turnover: a newly appointed examiner at a small-volume centre represents a larger share of tests than at a high-volume one. Examiner marking style varies within DVSA tolerances.
• Traffic pattern changes: road works, new road layouts, changed pedestrian crossings, or changed signal timings all alter the decision-frequency of a test route without the DVSA formally changing the route.
• Candidate pool: if a local driving school increases intake, the average preparedness of candidates can shift the pass rate. Large schools driving volume at smaller centres have an outsized effect.
• Weather: a year with a harder winter, more low-sun periods, or more wet weather than average correlates modestly with lower pass rates at outdoor-heavy rural routes.

None of these factors are published by the DVSA at centre level, so the analysis here is necessarily inferential. The year-on-year data is a signal, not an explanation. The most that can be said is that when multiple factors move in the same direction, you get the kind of double-digit swings seen at the extremes of this list. For most centres the variance is 1 to 3 percentage points year on year, well within what the understanding pass rate statistics guide describes as normal noise.

#What this means if you are booking a test

Year-on-year pass rate data is useful context but a poor booking guide. The most pragmatic approach is to choose the centre where you have trained, since route familiarity is the variable most within your control. The should I travel for an easier test guide covers the trade-off: a 2 to 5 percentage point difference between centres is typically smaller than the benefit of knowing the local roads. If you are genuinely choosing between several accessible centres, the pass rate finder shows current-period rates. Looking at a single year's change (this table) adds a second dimension, but the current-period rate remains the more stable signal.

One practical case where trend data matters: if your local centre has historically been in the 50 to 55% range but dropped to 44% last year, it is worth checking whether there is a structural reason (persistent route difficulty, known examiner allocation issues) or whether it looks like a one-year statistical event that is likely to revert. The current-period data at /rankings/easiest and /rankings/hardest shows where each centre sits in the national table, which is a more durable signal than a single year's direction of travel.

#How to check any centre's pass rate history

#How this data is produced

The figures here come from DVSA's DRT122A statistical release, which publishes quarterly pass rate data at centre level for all DVSA practical test categories. Passrates.uk compiles this data across all reporting periods going back to 2013-14, computes year-on-year deltas for every centre, and filters to centres with at least 1,000 tests in 2024-25 and at least 200 in 2023-24 to give statistically meaningful comparisons. The 261 centres meeting both criteria represent approximately 90% of total UK test volume in 2024-25. The data is updated when DVSA publishes each new quarterly release. Current-period centre rankings are on the easiest centres page and the hardest centres page.

#Sources and further reading

The figures, fees, and procedures referenced in this article are verifiable on the official gov.uk pages below. PassRates.uk is built on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s open data, published under the Open Government Licence.

• Driving test (gov.uk)
• Change or cancel your driving test (gov.uk)
• Find a driving test centre (gov.uk)
• Driving test and theory test data, cars (gov.uk)
• Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (gov.uk)
• Open Government Licence v3.0 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)