Wales Driving Test Pass Rate 2024-25: Why Welsh Centres Run 5.6 Points Above Average

#Why is the Wales pass rate so much higher than England?

The simplest answer is that Wales has almost no major urban conurbation with a large cluster of low-pass-rate city centres. England's national figure of 48.5% is pulled down by high-volume London centres running at 35 to 43 percent, and by West Midlands sites including Wolverhampton (33.4%), Wednesbury (36.4%), and Featherstone (34.1%), each conducting tens of thousands of tests per year. Wales has no equivalent. Its largest test centre populations are in Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport, and even those sites do not replicate the extreme density and traffic pressure of inner London routes.

The statistical mechanism is the same as the one that makes Scotland's rural centres its highest-performing ones. Welsh centres such as Dolgellau, Pwllheli, and Haverfordwest run test routes largely on A and B roads through market towns and coastal areas. Hazard density is lower, junction complexity is more predictable, and dual carriageway sections tend to be open-road rather than urban stop-start. Candidates who have been taught on those roads show up prepared for those roads.

#Highest and lowest pass rates among Welsh centres, 2024-25

Bangor (Wales) leads at 64.1% on 3,029 tests, sitting in the top four centres nationally alongside Dorchester and Kendal. The town's road network combines A5 dual carriageway approaches with a compact city centre and access to rural Anglesey routes, a mix that the DVSA test design favours. Pwllheli, in the Llyn Peninsula, historically produces pass rates in the 70s on small test volumes. At the other end, Swansea and Newport sit closer to the national average at around 48 to 52 percent.

Cardiff, the largest Welsh centre by volume, runs in the mid-to-upper 50s. That is considerably above Cardiff's English equivalent in terms of city density. Unlike Bristol (47.3%) or Birmingham centres which drag below 45%, Cardiff does not face the same combination of high traffic density and constrained parking-off-route areas that suppress urban pass rates in the Midlands.

#Should candidates travel to Wales to pass their test?

The same logic that makes Scottish rural travel questionable applies here. A higher pass rate at Dolgellau or Pwllheli is only useful if you can practise on those roads. Sitting a test at an unfamiliar centre where the examiner expects competence on single-track passing places, hedge-banked B roads, and Anglesey roundabouts, without having trained on them, is unlikely to produce the statistical advantage the headline rate suggests. The honest guide to travelling for an easier test covers the calculation in detail.

The practical option for candidates in the Welsh Borders or South Wales is to check whether a Welsh centre is genuinely within commutable training distance. If Cardiff at 55%+ is within 45 minutes of where your lessons happen, it is a meaningful advantage over a Bristol or Midlands centre running below the national average. Centre choice within Wales itself, however, is a simpler decision: Bangor (64.1%) and the Llynhillaries towns are worth the extra drive only if your instructor regularly takes you out on those road types.

#Wales first-time pass rate, 2024-25

The Wales first-time pass rate tracks closely to the overall figure. Where England shows a first-time rate of 48.6% against an overall of 48.5%, Wales follows the same pattern with its first-time rate running fractionally above the overall 54.1%. DVSA data shows the first-time premium over the overall rate is very small at the country level, typically under 0.5 percentage points, because retakers who have had prior route exposure at that centre also perform well.

#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)
• Driving test and theory test data, cars (gov.uk)
• Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (gov.uk)
• New drivers (gov.uk)
• Association of British Insurers (abi.org.uk)
• Open Government Licence v3.0 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)