-
34.3%
Lowest pass rate
Wolverhampton
-
50.1%
GB average
across 1,990,665 tests
-
275
Centres ranked
of 319 in GB
-
March 2026
Data to
official DVSA release
Wolverhampton has the lowest car practical pass rate in Great Britain at 34.3% — around 16 points below the national average of 50.1%, and it still conducted 11,561 tests in the year. Fewer than 35% of them ended in a pass.
Almost every centre on this list works dense urban routes. Multi-lane roundabouts, bus lanes and box junctions, cyclists and parked cars narrowing the road, pedestrians stepping out, and traffic heavy enough that every junction is a judgement call rather than a formality. None of that changes the marking standard; it simply creates far more opportunity to record a fault in forty minutes.
Several of these centres also serve learners who cannot practise on the routes easily — city test centres draw candidates from across a region, and a driver who has done all their lessons on suburban roads meets the hard junctions for the first time on test day. That is the part you can do something about.
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 | Wolverhampton | West Midlands | 34.3% | 13.6 weeks | 11,561 |
| 2 | Wednesbury | West Midlands | 35% | 14.3 weeks | 7,508 |
| 3 | Dunfermline (Vine) | Scotland | 36.4% | 14.9 weeks | 5,529 |
| 4 | Featherstone | West Midlands | 36.4% | 9.1 weeks | 13,193 |
| 5 | Gateshead | North East | 37.5% | 6.6 weeks | 9,512 |
| 6 | Norris Green (Liverpool) | North West | 37.8% | 15.8 weeks | 13,472 |
| 7 | Luton | East of England | 39.2% | 7.6 weeks | 7,759 |
| 8 | Chingford (London) | London | 39.9% | 5.6 weeks | 13,120 |
| 9 | Glasgow (Shieldhall) | Scotland | 39.9% | 14 weeks | 7,019 |
| 10 | Coventry | West Midlands | 40% | 5.9 weeks | 13,771 |
| 11 | Leicester (Cannock Street) | East Midlands | 40.2% | 5.1 weeks | 14,198 |
| 12 | Belvedere (London) | London | 40.5% | 9.9 weeks | 4,245 |
| 13 | Speke (Liverpool) | North West | 40.5% | 10.4 weeks | 8,159 |
| 14 | Camborne | South West | 40.6% | 6.4 weeks | 6,271 |
| 15 | Stoke-On-Trent (Cobridge) | West Midlands | 40.6% | 9.9 weeks | 8,413 |
| 16 | Plymouth | South West | 40.7% | 8.6 weeks | 11,167 |
| 17 | St Helens (Liverpool) | North West | 40.9% | 6.4 weeks | 14,174 |
| 18 | Cardigan | Wales | 41% | 7.9 weeks | 1,192 |
| 19 | Banbury | South East | 41.3% | 20.4 weeks | 9,069 |
| 20 | Greenford (Horsenden Lane) | London | 41.4% | 7.7 weeks | 7,222 |
| 21 | Edinburgh (Currie) | Scotland | 41.6% | 23 weeks | 6,202 |
| 22 | Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) | West Midlands | 41.6% | 17.7 weeks | 6,646 |
| 23 | Greenock | Scotland | 41.7% | 7.6 weeks | 3,547 |
| 24 | Hamilton | Scotland | 42% | 15.6 weeks | 6,112 |
| 25 | Elgin | Scotland | 42.3% | 7.6 weeks | 2,934 |
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 low pass rate is not a reason to write off your local centre. It reflects the difficulty of the roads, and those are the roads you will drive for the next decade — passing on them is worth something. It is also an average across thousands of candidates, not a prediction about you: well-prepared learners pass at these centres every day.
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
- Easiest driving test centres in the UK — The 25 DVSA centres with the highest car pass rates, and why quiet roads — not soft examiners — put them there.
- 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.
