Lincoln test centre: 52.1% pass rate, £338 to get through it.

6,192 candidates took the car practical test at Lincoln during 2025/26 and 3,225 of them passed, a pass rate of 52.1%. That is a mid-sized centre, ranked 149th of 308 on pass rate, and 10th of 20 inside East Midlands.

That lands within 2.0 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 1.3 points above the 50.8% East Midlands average, which makes Lincoln an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 52.1% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.92 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Lincoln pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.92 times, or £119. Add 0.92 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the East Midlands rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £219. The test cycle at Lincoln is therefore about £338. Testing here therefore saves about £24 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

A fail at Lincoln costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 17.1 weeks in July 2026, 5.2 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 0.92 expected retakes that is about 15.7 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 1,767 standard slots inside the booking window here and 6.0% of them were still free to book.

First attempts track the headline closely: 1,742 passes from 3,315 first tests at Lincoln, 52.5% against 52.1% for all attempts. 122 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.68% of them.

The pass rate at Lincoln has held flat since 2021/22, moving from 51.7% to 52.1%. Volume has been steady, 6,029 tests then against 6,192 now. A stable rate is the useful kind for planning, because it means this year's figure is a fair guide to next year's odds.

Male candidates passed at 53.6% and female candidates at 50.4%, a gap of 3.2 points across 3,205 and 2,987 tests. Automatic tests made up 24.5% of the workload and passed at 44.5%, 7.6 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 48.2% in February 2026 to 54.4% in October 2025, a 6.2-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in East Midlands, Grantham (Somerby) runs 5.8 points higher at 57.9%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £58 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.