What the DVSA figures show once you add them up, for 2025/26 and the years before it. They cover Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales. Every number is worked out from the published tables when the page loads, and each one says how it was worked out. Quote any of them.
The national pass rate is the highest it has been in five years
50.0%of car practical tests were passed in 2025/26: 989,081 passes from 1,977,830 tests
That is up 1.1 points on 2021/22, after a low of 47.8% in 2023/24.
Method. Every centre's annual total from DVSA table DRT122A, added up, passes divided by tests. It is not the average of the centre rates, so big centres count for more.
Every centre ranked by pass rate
The best and worst centres are more than 40 points apart, but the centre at the top ran 8 tests all year
40.7 pointsbetween Isles of Scilly at 75.0% and Wolverhampton at 34.3%
Method. Highest and lowest of the 310 centres with a 2025/26 pass rate, with no minimum number of tests. Isles of Scilly conducted 8 tests all year; Wolverhampton conducted 11,561.
The full ranking, highest to lowest
Most of that gap survives when you drop the tiny centres
35.4 pointsbetween Melton Mowbray at 69.7% and Wolverhampton at 34.3%, counting only centres with 1,000 tests or more
Method. The same ranking with the 54 centres that conducted fewer than 1,000 tests removed, leaving 256. The gap narrows by 5.3 points, so the spread is not an artefact of small islands and rural outposts.
Compare centres with the tests behind each rate
Sitting your first test is barely different from sitting your third
+0.5 pointsfor first attempts: 50.5% against 50.0% for tests at any attempt, 2025/26
Method. DVSA table DRT122C counts tests taken by candidates who had never sat one before: 974,492 of them, 49.3% of all car tests that year. Compared with the DRT122A total for the same year.
First-attempt rates by centre
The automatic gap is large, and it holds at almost every centre
5.4 pointslower for automatic cars: 44.6% against 50.0% overall, 2025/26
Method. DVSA table DRT122E against the DRT122A total for the same year. Automatic tests were 29.4% of all car tests. Of the 255 centres with at least 200 automatic tests, 254 had an automatic rate below their own overall rate.
Automatic pass rates by centre
A theory test is failed more often than a practical one
44.8%of theory tests were passed in 2025/26, 5.2 points below the practical rate
Method. DVSA table DRT112A, 2,904,405 car theory tests across 192 theory centres, against the practical figure above.
Theory centres and their results
Waiting times have gone nowhere in a year
11.9 weekswas the median wait for tests taken in August 2026, against 12.6 weeks twelve months earlier
The national figure moved 0.7 of a week over twelve months, down, with a low of 10.2 weeks in April 2026. The spread between centres is the story instead: Crieff at 31.4 weeks and Birmingham (Cocks Moors Woods Leisure Centre) at 3.1 weeks in the same month.
Method. For each month, the median of the 306 or so centre medians in DVSA table DRT122F. A centre median is the middle gap between booking and test for the learners who tested there that month.
Waiting times at every centre
The busiest centres have the shortest waits, not the longest
4.5 weeksshorter at the busiest quarter of centres: a median of 11.1 weeks against 15.6 weeks at the quietest quarter
Method. The 310 centres ranked by tests conducted in 2025/26, split into quarters, then the median of each group's August 2026 waits (77 and 71 centres reported one). Busy centres are busy because they have examiners.
Centres ranked by tests conducted
For journalists
The figures are the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s, published on GOV.UK and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The sums, comparisons and rankings on this page are ours. You are free to quote and republish them; please credit DVSA for the data and say the analysis is PassRank’s, with a link back so readers can check it.
The combined dataset, every centre with its address, coordinates, latest pass rate and latest wait, is open at /api/public/centres.json. Definitions and the exact DVSA tables behind each figure are on the data page. Pass rates cover the year to March; waiting times are monthly, latest August 2026.
Need a cut we do not publish, a figure for one town, or a check on a number before you print it? Write to [email protected].
The attribution to publish with the data. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Pass rate and waiting time data: Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA).
