-
70%
Highest pass rate
Montrose
-
50.1%
GB average
across 1,990,665 tests
-
275
Centres ranked
of 319 in GB
-
March 2026
Data to
official DVSA release
Montrose has the highest car practical pass rate in Great Britain at 70% — more than 19 points above the national average of 50.1%. Every centre in the table below beats that average, the last of them by 10.2 points.
The pattern in this list is geography, not generosity. Test routes around rural and island centres cover quiet single-carriageway roads with few multi-lane roundabouts, no bus lanes, no yellow boxes and little heavy traffic to judge gaps in. The same candidate driving the same way scores fewer faults there than on a route through a city ring road, and that difference is stable — these centres sit near the top year after year, not by chance in a single release.
Waiting times are the catch. Several of the highest-scoring centres are small operations serving a wide area, so their slots go quickly and the queue often runs to the end of DVSA's 24-week booking window. Check the wait column before you plan a trip around one.
The 25 centres, ranked
Pass rate figures for April 2025 to March 2026. Open any centre for its monthly trend, nearby alternatives and full history.
| # | Centre | Region | Pass rate | Wait | Tests a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montrose | Scotland | 70% | 15.5 weeks | 621 |
| 2 | Melton Mowbray | East Midlands | 69.7% | 21.7 weeks | 1,984 |
| 3 | Barrow In Furness | North West | 69.6% | 3.7 weeks | 1,699 |
| 4 | Dorchester | South West | 69% | 6.4 weeks | 4,353 |
| 5 | Pwllheli | Wales | 68.1% | 13 weeks | 737 |
| 6 | Arbroath | Scotland | 67.4% | 27 weeks | 605 |
| 7 | Cumnock | Scotland | 67.4% | 20.9 weeks | 760 |
| 8 | Kendal (Oxenholme Road) | North West | 65.1% | 9.3 weeks | 2,231 |
| 9 | Tunbridge Wells | South East | 64.5% | 12 weeks | 5,726 |
| 10 | Malton | Yorkshire and The Humber | 64.3% | 8.1 weeks | 876 |
| 11 | Abergavenny | Wales | 64.2% | 8.2 weeks | 5,924 |
| 12 | Fraserburgh | Scotland | 64% | 12.2 weeks | 531 |
| 13 | Yeovil | South West | 63.4% | 10 weeks | 7,493 |
| 14 | Lee On The Solent | South East | 63.2% | 17.4 weeks | 8,502 |
| 15 | Alness | Scotland | 63.1% | 15 weeks | 783 |
| 16 | Ipswich | East of England | 62.3% | 7.9 weeks | 11,466 |
| 17 | Bangor | Wales | 62.2% | 12.9 weeks | 4,032 |
| 18 | Inverurie | Scotland | 61.9% | 9.6 weeks | 749 |
| 19 | Workington | North West | 61.9% | 15.4 weeks | 2,998 |
| 20 | Norwich (Peachman Way) | East of England | 61.7% | 12 weeks | 12,541 |
| 21 | Bala | Wales | 61.6% | 12.1 weeks | 607 |
| 22 | Chichester | South East | 61.6% | 6.4 weeks | 6,672 |
| 23 | Weston-super-Mare | South West | 61% | 4 weeks | 4,443 |
| 24 | Northallerton | Yorkshire and The Humber | 60.4% | 7.9 weeks | 3,244 |
| 25 | Forfar | Scotland | 60.3% | 29.7 weeks | 667 |
250 more centres qualify for this ranking but fall outside the top 25. 44 of the 319 DVSA centres are excluded — either DVSA published no figure for them, or they run fewer than 500 car tests a year, too few for a rate to survive a handful of results. They keep their own pages with whatever was published.
What this ranking does not tell you
A high pass rate is a property of the roads, not a discount on the standard. Examiners work to the same marking sheet everywhere, and the fault that ends most tests — failing to look properly at a junction — is not easier to avoid in a quiet town. Booking a centre two hours away for a few percentage points usually backfires, because the advantage is cancelled out by sitting the test on roads you have never driven.
The figures are averages across every candidate a centre tested, most of whom you know nothing about. They say a great deal about the roads and very little about your chances on the day, which turn mostly on how much you have driven the routes around the centre you booked. Our guide to test routes covers how to work them out now that DVSA no longer publishes them.
How the ranking is built
Every figure comes from the DVSA statistical tables published on GOV.UK under the Open Government Licence — DRT122A for pass rates and DRT122F for test availability. Pass rates are the full-year figure for April 2025 to March 2026 rather than the latest month, because a single month at one centre swings several points on ordinary variation. Waiting times are the median gap between booking and testing among candidates who sat a test in June 2026 — not the soonest slot on the booking service, which cancellations often bring much closer.
Centres qualify for a ranking only if they published the figure being ranked and conducted at least 500 car tests in the year, about ten a week. Nothing is estimated, weighted or adjusted, and the order is recomputed from scratch whenever DVSA publishes.
Figures cover Great Britain. Practical tests in Northern Ireland are run by the DVA, which publishes nothing comparable at centre level, so no Northern Irish centre appears in any ranking here.
Other rankings
- Hardest driving test centres in the UK — The 25 lowest pass rates in Great Britain, what their routes have in common, and how to prepare if yours is on the list.
- Shortest driving test waiting times — Where you can book soonest in Great Britain right now, updated with each DVSA availability release.
- Longest driving test waiting times — The centres booked out furthest ahead, how close they are to DVSA’s 24-week ceiling, and what to do if yours is one.
- Busiest driving test centres in the UK — The centres conducting the most car tests, how much of the national total they handle, and what volume means for your booking.
To sort and filter every centre yourself rather than read a top 25, use pass rates by centre and waiting times by centre, both of which cover all 319 DVSA centres.
