DVSA Shows Learners in Some Postcodes Pay Twice as Often for a £75 Retest

• The national car driving test pass rate stands at 49.1 percent for the year to March 2026, up slightly from 48.7 percent the year before, so just under half of every sitting ends in a fail and another £62 to £75 fee.
• At Belvedere in South East London only 33.2 percent of candidates pass, against 72.3 percent at Llandrindod Wells in Mid Wales, a gap of more than 39 percentage points between the two centres.
• London has the lowest average pass rate of any region in Great Britain at 40.8 percent, more than 13 points behind Wales on 53.8 percent and Scotland on 54.2 percent.

A car driving test in Great Britain costs £62 on a weekday, or £75 in the evening, at a weekend or on a bank holiday, and that fee is due again every time a learner fails. New DVSA figures published on GOV.UK for the year to March 2026 show the odds of paying twice are far from even across the country. Nationally, 49.1 percent of test attempts passed, a small rise on the 48.7 percent recorded the year before. But at the roughly 380 test centres that make up that average, the range runs from just 33.2 percent passing at Belvedere in South East London to 72.3 percent at Llandrindod Wells in Mid Wales, a spread of more than double.

Why Your Test Centre Can Decide How Much You Pay to Get a Licence

The figures come from DVSA statistical tables DRT122A, DRT111A and DRT111B, published under the Open Government Licence and covering car practical tests taken between April 2025 and March 2026. Roughly 1.9 million tests were conducted in that period. Male candidates passed at 50.8 percent and female candidates at 47.2 percent, a gap that has held steady for several years.

The regional split is where the money question gets sharper. London sits at 40.8 percent, the lowest average of any region, with its own worst centre, Belvedere, recording just 33.2 percent and Erith close behind on 34.1 percent. Wales sits at the opposite end on 53.8 percent, helped by Llandrindod Wells on 72.3 percent and Crieff in Perthshire, Scotland, on 69.8 percent. Scotland’s overall regional average is 54.2 percent and the South West of England sits at 52.4 percent, both comfortably ahead of London, the West Midlands on 44.1 percent and the South East on 48.6 percent.

That is not a small difference in outcome. A learner sitting a test at Belvedere fails roughly two thirds of the time. A learner at Llandrindod Wells fails little more than a quarter of the time. Both pay the same £62 or £75 fee for the privilege of sitting the test, and both pay it again in full if they fail. There is no reduced repeat fee and no cap on how many times a learner can be charged.

DVSA data does not put a single figure on how much this postcode gap costs learners nationally. The department does not publish a running total of repeat-test spending, only the pass rate at each centre. What the figures do show is where the fee is most likely to be paid more than once. Urban centres with heavy traffic, multi-lane roundabouts and bus lanes cluster at the bottom of the table: alongside Belvedere and Erith, Birmingham’s South Yardley centre sits on 34.8 percent, Barking in East London on 35.2 percent and Slough on 35.6 percent. Rural and small-town centres cluster at the top: Crieff, Whitby in North Yorkshire on 68.1 percent, Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands on 67.5 percent and Pwllheli in North Wales on 66.9 percent.

Part of the gap reflects road conditions rather than test difficulty on paper. Examiners are trained and assessed to a single national standard, and DVSA does not link low pass rates to inconsistent marking. Busy urban routes simply carry more roundabouts, bus lanes and multi-lane hazards than a test route around a market town. Candidates in cities are also more likely to book before they are fully ready: waiting lists push some learners to take an early slot rather than lose their place in the queue. Average waiting times for a test currently run at 14 to 18 weeks and vary by region, so a learner who fails at a low-pass-rate centre is often booking a second wait on top of a second fee.

The gap between the busiest cities and the quietest towns is wide enough that it shapes whole regional averages, not just a handful of outlier centres. Nine of the ten lowest-scoring centres in the country sit inside London or the West Midlands conurbation. Nine of the ten highest-scoring centres sit in a small town, a coastal resort or a rural area of Wales, Scotland, Cumbria or Yorkshire. A learner does not choose which region they live in before they start lessons, so the fee they end up paying twice is, in a real sense, decided before they ever get behind the wheel.

There is a recent sign of national improvement. In August 2026 the monthly pass rate reached 52.1 percent, the highest single month recorded from April 2021 onward, according to DVSA figures reported alongside the annual data. That is well above the 49.1 percent yearly average and suggests the position could be easing, though DVSA has not yet confirmed whether the August figure marks a lasting trend or a one-off high point tied to that month’s candidates. A learner testing this autumn still has no guarantee of a better outcome than the year-long average, and the regional gap between London and Wales has not narrowed in the same period.

Can You Avoid Paying Twice?

The £62 or £75 fee itself cannot be avoided or reduced. Every candidate pays the same price regardless of test centre, and there is no discount for a second or third attempt. What a learner can control is the likelihood of needing that second payment at all.

Book through the official GOV.UK driving test service directly. Third-party booking sites add a mark-up on top of the DVSA fee and present it as the standard price, so a learner who books through one of these sites can already be paying more than £62 or £75 before they have even taken the test.

DVSA recommends a minimum of 45 hours with a professional instructor plus 22 hours of private practice before booking a test. Candidates who fall well short of that figure are far more likely to need a repeat sitting, whatever centre they test at.

Practise the actual routes used by your local test centre rather than travelling to a centre with a higher headline pass rate. Instructors are consistent on this point: a candidate who learns in Birmingham and tests in Shrewsbury faces unfamiliar roundabouts and junctions with none of the muscle memory built up locally, which tends to cancel out any advantage from a centre’s higher average. The exception is a learner who lives roughly equidistant between two centres and puts in real practice in both areas before choosing.

Sit at least two or three full mock tests with an instructor acting as examiner before booking the real thing. This is one of the strongest predictors of a first-time pass. A mock test exposes gaps in sat-nav following, independent driving and manoeuvres while there is still time to fix them.

Ask the instructor for an honest reading of readiness before the test is booked, not after a deposit has already been paid. A good instructor will say plainly if more hours are needed rather than letting a learner book a slot they are not ready for. That single conversation, repeated across a course of lessons, does more to control the odds of a repeat £62 or £75 payment than any choice of test centre ever will.

Where possible, ask your instructor about quieter time slots. Early morning and mid-week tests, away from Monday morning and Friday afternoon traffic, tend to involve fewer complex situations than a Friday rush-hour booking, though this makes only a marginal difference next to hours of practice and route familiarity.

None of this changes what the DVSA charges. It only changes how many times a learner in a low-pass-rate postcode is likely to be asked to pay it.

Sources: Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, car driving test statistical tables DRT122A, DRT111A and DRT111B, published on GOV.UK under the Open Government Licence, covering data for the year April 2025 to March 2026 (quarterly tables last refreshed 25 June 2026, annual tables last refreshed 17 July 2026). Centre and regional breakdown cross-referenced with DrivePro’s compiled analysis of the same DVSA tables, published 5 April 2026 and updated 15 August 2026.