Penzance test centre: 46.5% pass rate, £423 to get through it.

Penzance is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 507 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 236 were passes, giving 46.5%. 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 245th of 308 nationally and 17th of 21 in South West.

That is 3.5 percentage points below the 50.03% national figure, and 5.2 points below the 51.7% average for South West. 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 46.5% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.15 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Penzance pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.15 times, or £133. Add 1.15 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the South West rate of £36 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £289. The test cycle at Penzance is therefore about £423. Testing here therefore costs about £47 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.

The queue is the expensive part at Penzance. DVSA recorded a median wait of 21 weeks between booking and taking a test in July 2026, 9.1 weeks longer than the 11.9-week median across all centres. Multiply that by the 1.15 expected retakes and a candidate here is looking at roughly 24.1 extra weeks of waiting, close to 6 months of insurance, lesson top-ups and a licence still not in the post. In the same month DVSA offered 249 standard slots inside the booking window here and 2.0% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 251 candidates sat their first test at Penzance and 109 passed, 43.4%, which is 3.1 points below the all-attempts rate. 0 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 0.00% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Penzance has fallen by 5.0 points, from 51.5% to 46.5%. Test volume has shrunk over the same span, from 662 to 507 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £65 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 47.5% and female candidates at 45.8%, a gap of 1.7 points across 236 and 271 tests. Automatic tests made up 10.5% of the workload and passed at 37.7%, 8.8 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 41.2% in November 2025 to 50.7% in September 2025, a 9.5-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in South West, Trowbridge runs 8.7 points higher at 55.2%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £106 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.