Chingford (London) test centre: 39.9% pass rate, £609 to get through it.

13,120 candidates took the car practical test at Chingford (London) during 2025/26 and 5,234 of them passed, a pass rate of 39.9%. That is a high-volume centre, ranked 300th of 308 on pass rate, and 25th of 26 inside London.

That is 10.1 percentage points below the 50.03% national figure, and 8.9 points below the 48.8% average for London. Low pass rates cluster where test routes carry heavy traffic, multi-lane junctions and frequent bus lanes. The examiners are not stricter; the roads give a candidate more chances to make a serious fault.

Turn 39.9% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.51 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Chingford (London) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.51 times, or £155. Add 1.51 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the London rate of £43 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £454. The test cycle at Chingford (London) is therefore about £609. Testing here therefore costs about £184 more than the same candidate would spend at a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, purely because of the extra attempt the pass rate implies.

Waiting time at Chingford (London) ran to a median 9.6 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 2.3 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 1.51 expected retakes that is roughly 14.5 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 5,533 standard slots inside the booking window here and 4.6% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 5,824 candidates sat their first test at Chingford (London) and 2,185 passed, 37.5%, which is 2.4 points below the all-attempts rate. 57 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 0.98% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Chingford (London) has fallen by 0.7 points, from 40.6% to 39.9%. Volume has been steady, 12,203 tests then against 13,120 now. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £16 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 41.8% and female candidates at 36.8%, a gap of 5.0 points across 8,144 and 4,976 tests. Automatic tests accounted for 44.9% of the 13,120 tests and passed at 38.3%, close enough to the overall rate that gearbox choice is a comfort decision here, not a pass-rate one. Month to month the rate ran from 36.8% in March 2026 to 43.3% in August 2025, a 6.5-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in London, Bromley (London) runs 13.0 points higher at 52.9%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £224 of expected difference. Before moving, price the switch: a new instructor or extra travel for route familiarity typically costs £60 to £120 plus two settling-in lessons, which eats most of a gap under about eight points.