Monmouth test centre: 51.0% pass rate, £337 to get through it.

Monmouth is a small centre by DVSA standards: 1,283 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 654 were passes, giving 51.0%. At that volume a run of two or three unusual weeks moves the annual figure visibly, so treat the number as a guide to the roads rather than a precise ranking. It sits 182nd of 308 nationally and 16th of 21 in Wales.

That lands within 0.9 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 1.4 points below the 52.4% Wales average, which makes Monmouth an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 51.0% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.96 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Monmouth pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.96 times, or £122. Add 0.96 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Wales rate of £32 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £215. The test cycle at Monmouth is therefore about £337. That is within £11 of what the same cycle costs at a centre on the national average, so Monmouth is close to cost-neutral as a choice.

Waiting time at Monmouth ran to a median 11.6 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 0.3 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.96 expected retakes that is roughly 11.2 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 562 standard slots inside the booking window here and 13.2% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 706 first attempts at Monmouth, 373 passed, a rate of 52.8%, which is 1.9 points above the all-attempts figure. 19 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 2.69% of them. The gap says the candidates arriving well prepared are getting through, and the all-attempts rate is being pulled down by repeat attempts.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Monmouth has fallen by 5.4 points, from 56.4% to 51.0%. Test volume has shrunk over the same span, from 2,230 to 1,283 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £54 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 49.1% and female candidates at 53.1%, a gap of 4.0 points across 680 and 603 tests. Automatic tests made up 9.7% of the workload and passed at 40.3%, 10.7 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 44.7% in October 2025 to 63.2% in July 2025, a 18.5-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Wales, Brecon runs 7.8 points higher at 58.7%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £74 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.