Redhill Aerodrome test centre: 53.9% pass rate, £342 to get through it.
DVSA conducted 5,408 car practical tests here between April 2025 and March 2026, and 2,916 candidates passed. On the expected-attempts arithmetic that is 1.85 attempts, £115 in DVSA fees and £227 of retake lessons before a licence.
- Pass rate
- 53.9%
- Tests conducted
- 5,408
- National rank
- 118
- Median wait
- 10 wk
+3.9 pts vs national
2,916 passes
of 308 ranked centres
July 2026
What passing at Redhill Aerodrome costs
Expected cost of the test cycle for the average candidate at a 53.9% centre.
- Expected attempts (1 ÷ pass rate)1.85
- DVSA fees at £62 weekday£115
- Retake lessons (0.85 × 7 hr × £38)£227
- Test cycle at this centre£342
- Against a national-average centre-£48
- Extra queue time from retakes8.5 wk
Add the parts that do not change with the centre and the full bill from provisional to licence at South East lesson rates is about £2,109: £34 provisional, £23 theory, 45 hours of tuition at £38 (£1,710) and the test cycle above. Full cost stack.
What 53.9% at Redhill Aerodrome actually means for your budget.
5,408 candidates took the car practical test at Redhill Aerodrome during 2025/26 and 2,916 of them passed, a pass rate of 53.9%. That is a mid-sized centre, ranked 118th of 308 on pass rate, and 16th of 32 inside South East.
That is 3.9 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 0.8 points above the 53.2% South East average. A centre in this band is usually working quieter road layouts with fewer forced lane decisions, not a softer marking standard: the DVSA marking sheet is national.
Turn 53.9% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.85 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Redhill Aerodrome pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.85 times, or £115. Add 0.85 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the South East rate of £38 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £227. The test cycle at Redhill Aerodrome is therefore about £342. Testing here therefore saves about £48 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.
Waiting time at Redhill Aerodrome ran to a median 10 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 1.9 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.85 expected retakes that is roughly 8.5 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 2,541 standard slots inside the booking window here and 5.7% of them were still free to book.
First attempts track the headline closely: 1,334 passes from 2,492 first tests at Redhill Aerodrome, 53.5% against 53.9% for all attempts. 90 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.61% of them.
Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Redhill Aerodrome has fallen by 1.0 points, from 55.0% to 53.9%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 3,395 to 5,408 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £12 to the average candidate.
Male candidates passed at 54.8% and female candidates at 52.8%, a gap of 2.0 points across 3,005 and 2,403 tests. Automatic tests made up 33.4% of the workload and passed at 49.7%, 4.2 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 49.6% in April 2025 to 56.1% in December 2025, a 6.5-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.
Among centres of a similar size in South East, Tunbridge Wells runs 10.6 points higher at 64.5%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £100 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.
Redhill Aerodrome vs its region and the country.
- Rank in South East
- 16 of 32
- First-attempt rate
- 53.5%
- Zero-fault first passes
- 90
- Automatic pass rate
- 49.7%
- Male candidates
- 54.8%
- Female candidates
- 52.8%
+0.8 pts vs region
2,492 first tests
3.61% of first attempts
33.4% of tests here
3,005 tests
2,403 tests
Down 1.0 points since 2021/22.
Dashed line: the 50.03% national pass rate for 2025/26.
Weeks between booking and taking the test, DVSA table DRT122F. Latest reading 10 weeks, 1.9 below the 11.9-week median across all centres.
DVSA withholds the age 25 cell at Redhill Aerodrome, so there is nothing to compare it with.
Redhill Aerodrome conducted 5,408 tests across all ages, but split into single years the age 25 cell is one DVSA withholds, so there is no published figure to compare and this page does not invent one. 8 of the 10 age rows carry counts; the rest are marked withheld in the table below.
Across South East as a whole the same two ages are 64.6% and 53.0%, which on this page's arithmetic is £242 against £352 in fees and retake lessons at the £38 South East rate. That is regional context for Redhill Aerodrome, not a figure for Redhill Aerodrome, and it is offered as exactly that.
17-year-olds here pass at almost exactly the national rate for their age (63.6%). Against South East, where the same age passes 64.6%, they are 1.1 points behind. Either way, budgeting a 17-year-old against this centre's all-ages 53.9% is pessimistic by 9.6 points.
DVSA withheld the counts for ages 16 and 25 at Redhill Aerodrome, which it does where a cell is small enough that publishing the numbers could identify candidates. For age 25 the agency still printed a pass rate; those rates appear in the table below exactly as published, and are used for nothing else on this page, because a percentage with no denominator cannot carry a cost estimate.
- Age 17 here
- 63.6%
- Age 25 here
- n/a
- Age gap
- abstains
- Age 17 vs country
- +0.0 pts
1,202 tests
counts withheld
national gap +14.9 pts
63.6% nationally
Pass rate by age, South East
This centre's own cells are mostly withheld, so the curve shown is the South East aggregate from the same table.
What each age costs at Redhill Aerodrome, on the same arithmetic as the rest of this page.
Expected attempts is 1 ÷ the pass rate for that age, fees are £62 an attempt and retake lessons are 7 hours at the South East rate of £38. Ages where DVSA withheld the counts are shown as withheld and are not priced: a rate the agency would not put a denominator against is not a rate to budget from.
| Age | Tests conducted | Passes | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | withheld | withheld | not published | not priced | not priced |
| 17 | 1,202 | 764 | 63.6% | 1.57 | £250 |
| 18 | 717 | 389 | 54.3% | 1.84 | £339 |
| 19 | 367 | 219 | 59.7% | 1.68 | £284 |
| 20 | 235 | 132 | 56.2% | 1.78 | £318 |
| 21 | 197 | 110 | 55.8% | 1.79 | £321 |
| 22 | 181 | 111 | 61.3% | 1.63 | £269 |
| 23 | 158 | 81 | 51.3% | 1.95 | £374 |
| 24 | 142 | 80 | 56.3% | 1.77 | £316 |
| 25 | withheld | withheld | 53.4% | not priced | not priced |
| Under 26 | 3,318 | 1,950 | 58.8% | 1.70 | £292 |
| All ages | 5,408 | 2,916 | 53.9% | 1.85 | £342 |
The under-26 row is DVSA’s own block total from DRT122D and counts the withheld cells, so it will exceed the sum of the ages printed above it wherever a cell is withheld (here: ages 16 and 25). The all-ages row is DRT122A, the figure the rest of this page uses. Nothing on this table is estimated or back-filled.
Read it at the level that holds up
Of the 10 age rows DVSA publishes for Redhill Aerodrome, 8 carry counts and 8 clear the 100-test floor, which is why the age 17 against age 25 comparison and its cost consequence are left blank above rather than filled with a number that would not survive a second look. Pooled across all 32 South East centres the same cells are large enough to read, and the national age curve rests on 301,662 tests at age 17 alone.
Every published financial year at Redhill Aerodrome.
| Financial year | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 5,408 | 2,916 | 53.9% | 1.85 | £342 |
| 2024/25 | 4,619 | 2,280 | 49.4% | 2.02 | £398 |
| 2023/24 | 6,204 | 2,975 | 48.0% | 2.09 | £418 |
| 2022/23 | 5,202 | 2,719 | 52.3% | 1.91 | £362 |
| 2021/22 | 3,395 | 1,866 | 55.0% | 1.82 | £331 |
| 2020/21 | 1,097 | 591 | 53.9% | 1.86 | £343 |
| 2019/20 | 4,425 | 2,179 | 49.2% | 2.03 | £400 |
| 2018/19 | 4,953 | 2,273 | 45.9% | 2.18 | £449 |
Cost columns apply today’s £62 fee and the current £38 lesson rate to each year’s pass rate, so the column isolates what the pass rate does to the bill. The fee itself has moved over time; see fee history.
A 6.5-point swing across the year.
Monthly figures are why a single quarter is a poor guide. Nothing about the centre changed between April 2025 and December 2025; the mix of candidates did.
| Month | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | 347 | 172 | 49.6% |
| May 2025 | 334 | 169 | 50.6% |
| June 2025 | 390 | 213 | 54.6% |
| July 2025 | 408 | 225 | 55.1% |
| August 2025 | 354 | 187 | 52.8% |
| September 2025 | 345 | 178 | 51.6% |
| October 2025 | 507 | 281 | 55.4% |
| November 2025 | 562 | 311 | 55.3% |
| December 2025 | 510 | 286 | 56.1% |
| January 2026 | 453 | 246 | 54.3% |
| February 2026 | 526 | 279 | 53.0% |
| March 2026 | 672 | 369 | 54.9% |
The five South East centres closest in size to Redhill Aerodrome.
Matched on annual test volume rather than distance, because a centre doing 5,408 tests a year faces a comparable road and traffic mix. Cost column uses the South East lesson rate of £38 throughout, so the only variable is the pass rate.
| Centre | Pass rate | Tests | Median wait | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redhill Aerodrome (this centre) | 53.9% | 5,408 | 10 wk | £342 |
| Oxford (Cowley) | 50.6% | 5,419 | 5 wk | £382 |
| Ashford (Kent) | 46.2% | 5,475 | 6.3 wk | £444 |
| Aylesbury | 49.3% | 5,255 | 5 wk | £400 |
| Tunbridge Wells | 64.5% | 5,726 | 10 wk | £242 |
| Basingstoke | 56.8% | 5,009 | 19.6 wk | £312 |
Higher pass rate in South East
- Newport (Isle of Wight)54.1%
- Reading55.4%
- Eastbourne55.4%
- Herne Bay55.9%
Lower pass rate in South East
- Chertsey (London)52.9%
- Portsmouth52.8%
- Hastings (Ore)52.4%
- Winchester52.2%
Source and provenance
Pass rates, test volumes, gender splits and waiting times on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), taken from Driving test and theory test data: cars, tables DRT122A (Car driving test pass rates by gender and month: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122C (Car driving test pass rates by first driving attempt and gender, including zero faults: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122D (Car driving test pass rates by age (17 to 25 year olds), year and test centre, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122E (Automatic car driving test pass rates by gender: test centres, updated 2026-06-25) and DRT122F (Car driving test waiting times and availability by driving test centre, updated 2026-08-12). Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year; the national quarterly series runs to June 2026. Snapshot taken 2026-09-04.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Cost figures are drivingtestcost.com’s own, from the GOV.UK fee schedule and our regional lesson survey; DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money on this page comes from DVSA.
drivingtestcost.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the DVSA, the DVA or GOV.UK. Pass rates are DVSA published statistics reproduced under the Open Government Licence, not our assessment of any centre. Great Britain only; Northern Ireland tests are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison.
Age figures are single years of age from DRT122D and are reproduced exactly as published, withheld cells included. DVSA replaces the counts in small age cells with “..”, in most cases while still printing that cell’s pass rate; those cells are shown here as withheld and are excluded from every comparison, ranking and cost figure on this page. Nothing withheld is reconstructed from the block total. Redhill Aerodrome does not have enough published age volume for a centre-level comparison, so the age curve shown is the South East aggregate.