Theo Bennett
Data: DVSA driving test results by centre, financial year 2025/26 (table DRT122A, published 25 June 2026), analysed by Drivings. Last verified 3 August 2026.
The hardest place to pass a driving test in the UK is Wolverhampton, where just 34.3% of tests ended in a pass in 2025/26 — and the easiest is Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, where 69.7% of candidates passed. That is a spread of 35.4 percentage points between the two ends of the table, in a year when the national pass rate came in at exactly 50.0% across just under 2 million tests. We analysed the DVSA's complete centre-by-centre results — 1,998,621 practical car tests in all — to rank every major test centre in the country and work out what actually drives the gap.
The headline finding: a 35.4-point postcode lottery
Across the 2025/26 financial year, DVSA examiners conducted 1,998,621 practical car tests and recorded 1,000,043 passes — a national pass rate of 50.0%. Behind that tidy average sits an enormous range. Of the 317 centres that reported results, we ranked the 260 that conducted at least 1,000 tests, because tiny centres produce statistically noisy rates (the full reasoning is in the methodology below). At the bottom of that ranking sits Wolverhampton on 34.3%, the only centre in the ranking below 35%. At the top sits Melton Mowbray on 69.7%.
The bottom of the table has a distinctly urban flavour. Wolverhampton, Wednesbury and Featherstone — three centres serving the Black Country and Wolverhampton's fringes — take three of the five hardest slots, joined further down by big-city centres in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Coventry and Leicester. The top of the table reads like a tour of market towns and the coast: Melton Mowbray, Barrow In Furness, Dorchester, Kendal, Abergavenny. That contrast turns out to be the story of this dataset, and we unpack it below. You can also explore the complete sortable table for every centre on our practical test pass rates page.
The 15 hardest driving test centres in 2025/26
These are the 15 lowest pass rates among the 260 centres that conducted 1,000 or more tests. Note the volumes: several of these are very large operations — Leicester (Cannock Street) alone conducted 14,198 tests — so the low rates rest on thousands of results, not statistical flukes.
| Rank | Test centre | Pass rate | Tests conducted |
| 1 | Wolverhampton | 34.3% | 11,561 |
| 2 | Wednesbury | 35.0% | 7,508 |
| 3 | Barking (Tanner Street) | 36.3% | 5,543 |
| 4 | Dunfermline (Vine) | 36.4% | 5,529 |
| 5 | Featherstone | 36.4% | 13,193 |
| 6 | Gateshead | 37.5% | 9,512 |
| 7 | Norris Green (Liverpool) | 37.8% | 13,472 |
| 8 | Luton | 39.2% | 7,759 |
| 9 | Chingford (London) | 39.9% | 13,120 |
| 10 | Glasgow (Shieldhall) | 39.9% | 7,019 |
| 11 | Coventry | 40.0% | 13,771 |
| 12 | Leicester (Cannock Street) | 40.2% | 14,198 |
| 13 | Belvedere (London) | 40.5% | 4,245 |
| 14 | Speke (Liverpool) | 40.5% | 8,159 |
| 15 | Camborne | 40.6% | 6,271 |
The 15 easiest driving test centres in 2025/26
At the other end, the top two — Melton Mowbray and Barrow In Furness — are nearly inseparable, at 69.7% against 69.6%, and both are among the smallest centres in the ranking, with 1,984 and 1,699 tests respectively. But the list is not purely a small-centre artefact: Ipswich (11,466 tests) and Norwich (Peachman Way) (12,541 tests) both cleared 61% at serious scale.
| Rank | Test centre | Pass rate | Tests conducted |
| 1 | Melton Mowbray | 69.7% | 1,984 |
| 2 | Barrow In Furness | 69.6% | 1,699 |
| 3 | Dorchester | 69.0% | 4,353 |
| 4 | Kendal (Oxenholme Road) | 65.1% | 2,231 |
| 5 | Tunbridge Wells | 64.5% | 5,726 |
| 6 | Abergavenny | 64.2% | 5,924 |
| 7 | Yeovil | 63.4% | 7,493 |
| 8 | Lee On The Solent | 63.2% | 8,502 |
| 9 | Ipswich | 62.3% | 11,466 |
| 10 | Bangor | 62.2% | 4,032 |
| 11 | Workington | 61.9% | 2,998 |
| 12 | Norwich (Peachman Way) | 61.7% | 12,541 |
| 13 | Chichester | 61.6% | 6,672 |
| 14 | Weston-super-Mare | 61.0% | 4,443 |
| 15 | Northallerton | 60.4% | 3,244 |
What the pattern shows: the small-centre effect
Put the two lists side by side and a structural pattern emerges. Among our 260 ranked centres, the 30 that conducted between 1,000 and 3,000 tests averaged a 55.2% pass rate. The 109 centres that conducted 8,000 or more averaged 49.7%. Across all analysed centres, the correlation between test volume and pass rate is −0.293 — a modest relationship, but a real one. Busier centres genuinely tend to have lower pass rates.
Centres conducting 1,000–3,000 tests a year averaged a 55.2% pass rate. Centres conducting 8,000 or more averaged 49.7%.
Why should that be? Here we move from data to interpretation, and it is worth being precise about the difference: table DRT122A records outcomes, not causes. Two explanations fit the shape of the numbers. The first is roads. Large centres sit in large places, and their test routes thread through dense networks — multi-lane roundabouts, complex signalled junctions, heavy and unpredictable traffic — that simply present more opportunities for a serious fault than the quieter roads around a market town. The second is candidate mix. High-volume urban centres draw much larger and more varied pools of candidates than small rural ones, and the mix of experience, preparation and test attempts arriving at Birmingham (Garretts Green) is unlikely to match the mix arriving at Kendal.
What the data does not show is any difference in examiner behaviour. Every test in the country is marked against the same national standard, and a 40% centre is no more evidence of harsh examiners than a 65% centre is evidence of soft ones. The gap lives in the roads and the candidates, not the clipboard.
How the 10 busiest centres score
Volume tells its own story. Birmingham (Garretts Green) was Britain's busiest test centre in 2025/26, conducting 22,480 tests — and passing 44.4% of them. Across the ten busiest centres, only two — Leicester (Wigston) at 51.2% and Morden (London) at 51.0% — finished above the 50.0% national rate.
| Rank | Test centre | Tests conducted | Pass rate |
| 1 | Birmingham (Garretts Green) | 22,480 | 44.4% |
| 2 | Goodmayes (London) | 21,374 | 43.7% |
| 3 | Leicester (Wigston) | 18,868 | 51.2% |
| 4 | West Didsbury (Manchester) | 17,806 | 47.7% |
| 5 | Cardiff (Llanishen) | 16,401 | 46.5% |
| 6 | Birmingham (Kingstanding) | 16,133 | 48.5% |
| 7 | Chadderton | 15,988 | 46.8% |
| 8 | Morden (London) | 15,770 | 51.0% |
| 9 | Nottingham (Colwick) | 15,150 | 46.4% |
| 10 | Warwick (Wedgenock House) | 15,070 | 48.5% |
Should you travel to an easier test centre?
This is the question the tables invite, so here is the honest answer: for most learners, no.
A centre's pass rate is not a difficulty dial, and it is certainly not a measure of examiner generosity. It reflects the roads around the centre and the candidates who test on them. Melton Mowbray's 69.7% was earned largely by candidates who did their learning on those same roads — the population any centre's rate reflects. Turn up there after doing all your practice in Luton or Coventry and you are not part of that population — you are a stranger navigating unfamiliar roundabouts under exam pressure, which is precisely the condition in which faults accumulate.
And faults are the whole game. A test is passed or failed on what happens during the test itself and on how the faults you commit are counted — not on the venue's historical batting average. Route familiarity is one of the few genuine advantages a learner controls, and swapping it for a statistical edge that was never about you is usually a bad trade.
Some perspective helps too: 151 of the 260 centres we analysed sit at or above the 50.0% national rate, and only 109 sit below it. Most learners are already booked somewhere at or better than average. There is also the practical cost of switching: you re-enter the booking queue, where waiting times vary enormously by centre, under a system whose booking rules changed substantially in 2026. If you are weighing up your options, our test centre directory covers every centre's details in one place.
The lever you actually control is preparation. A Drivings mock exam shows you exactly where you would lose marks before an examiner does — which is worth far more than any centre's decimal point.
Methodology
This study is built on a single official source: DVSA table DRT122A, driving test results by centre, covering the 2025/26 financial year (April 2025 to March 2026) and published on 25 June 2026 as part of the driving and riding tests statistics collection on GOV.UK. The data is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We joined it to the GOV.UK Places test-centre dataset to standardise centre names and locations.
DRT122A covers 317 test centres. Our rankings include only the 260 that conducted at least 1,000 tests in the year. The threshold matters: at very low volumes a handful of results can swing a percentage wildly, so small-centre rates are noisy and any ranking built on them is unstable. Excluded centres still appear in our full data table — they are simply not ranked.
The national comparator is the overall 2025/26 pass rate of 50.0%, from 1,000,043 passes across 1,998,621 tests. The volume-band comparison sets the 30 centres with 1,000–3,000 tests (average pass rate 55.2%) against the 109 centres with 8,000 or more (49.7%), and the volume–pass-rate correlation of −0.293 is computed across all 260 ranked centres. Pass rates are reported to one decimal place exactly as the DVSA publishes them; we have not re-rounded, adjusted or interpolated any figure.
The full sortable table — every centre, its pass rate and its test volume — lives on our practical test pass rates page, and will be refreshed when the DVSA publishes its next annual release.
Frequently asked questions
Which is the hardest driving test centre in the UK?
Wolverhampton, with a pass rate of 34.3% across 11,561 tests in 2025/26 — the lowest of the 260 centres that conducted at least 1,000 tests. Wednesbury (35.0%) and Barking (Tanner Street) (36.3%) come next.
Which is the easiest driving test centre in the UK?
Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, where 69.7% of the 1,984 tests conducted in 2025/26 ended in a pass. Barrow In Furness (69.6%) and Dorchester (69.0%) sit just behind it.
Why do pass rates differ so much between test centres?
The 35.4-point spread chiefly reflects the roads around each centre and the mix of candidates who test there. Busy urban centres examine on dense, complex road networks and serve large, varied candidate pools; small-town centres test on quieter roads. The volume data points the same way: centres conducting 1,000–3,000 tests a year averaged 55.2%, against 49.7% at centres with 8,000 or more.
Is it easier to pass your driving test in a small town?
The data leans that way, but only modestly — the correlation between a centre's test volume and its pass rate is −0.293, which is real but far from decisive. Plenty of large centres perform well: Ipswich passed 62.3% across 11,466 tests, and Leicester (Wigston), one of the busiest centres in Britain, beat the national average at 51.2%.
Should I change my test centre for a higher pass rate?
Usually not. A centre's rate reflects its local roads and candidates, not friendlier examiners, and switching trades away route familiarity — one of the few advantages you genuinely control. With 151 of 260 ranked centres at or above the national rate, most learners are already testing somewhere average or better.
Do driving examiners have pass quotas?
No. Every test is marked against the same national standard, and your result is decided by the driving faults you accumulate on the day — not by a target, allowance or quota at the centre. Our guide to driving test faults explains exactly how the marking works.
Where does this data come from?
From the DVSA's official statistics: table DRT122A, driving test results by centre, financial year 2025/26, published 25 June 2026 and used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We analysed all 317 centres, ranked the 260 with at least 1,000 tests, and published the complete table on our practical test pass rates page.
