South West test centres: 51.7% average, a 28.3-point spread and £317 between the best and worst.
DVSA ran 153,125 car practical tests across 22 South West centres in April 2025 to March 2026 and 79,229 candidates passed. The gap between Dorchester at 69.0% and Camborne at 40.6% is worth about £317 of expected fees and retake lessons.
- Regional pass rate
- 51.7%
- Test centres
- 22
- Median wait
- 8 wk
- Lesson rate
- £32-£40
+1.7 pts vs national
21 with full data
across the region, July 2026
per hour, manual
South West learner budget
At the South West average of 51.7% and £36 an hour.
- Provisional licence£34
- Theory test£23
- 45 hours at £36£1,620
- DVSA fees (1.93 attempts)£120
- Retake lessons£235
- Typical South West total£2,032
Excludes learner insurance and costs after passing. Full cost stack.
South West passes above the national rate.
Across 22 centres, South West recorded 51.7% in April 2025 to March 2026, 1.7 percentage points above the 50.03% figure for Great Britain, which ranks it 3 of 11 DVSA regions. That is 153,125 tests and 79,229 passes.
The regional average hides the choice that actually matters. Dorchester finished the year on 69.0% from 4,353 tests, Camborne on 40.6% from 6,271. On the expected-attempts model the first implies 1.45 attempts and £203 of fees and retake lessons, the second 2.46 attempts and £520. The 28.3-point spread is therefore a £317 decision.
Waiting time varies as widely as the pass rate. Isles of Scilly showed a median 21.7 weeks between booking and test in the latest DVSA reading, against 3.6 weeks at Bodmin. The regional median is 8 weeks, and the national median across all 317 centres is 11.9. Queue length is the part of a fail that a cost table misses: each retake pushes the licence back by roughly the local median, with insurance and lesson top-ups running through it.
Bristol (Kingswood) is the busiest centre in South West at 14,863 tests, passing 51.9%. Lesson rates across South West run £32 to £40 an hour for manual tuition, which is what turns a percentage point of pass rate into a pound figure: at £36 an hour, each extra expected attempt costs £314 in fee and follow-up lessons.
1 South West centre ran fewer than 100 tests in the year. DVSA warns that figures at that scale are not reliable for comparing centres, so they are listed in the table below with their published figures but have no page of their own.
All 22 South West test centres, ranked.
Test cycle cost is the expected DVSA fees plus retake lessons at the South West rate of £36 an hour, so the column compares centres on the one variable that changes: how many attempts the pass rate implies.
| # | Test centre | Pass rate | Tests | 1st attempt | Wait | Attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Isles of Scilly low volume | 75.0% | 8 | n/a | 21.7 wk | 1.33 | £167 |
| 2 | Dorchester | 69.0% | 4,353 | 71.8% | 10.9 wk | 1.45 | £203 |
| 3 | Yeovil | 63.4% | 7,493 | 64.1% | 16.3 wk | 1.58 | £243 |
| 4 | Weston-super-Mare | 61.0% | 4,443 | 61.3% | 5 wk | 1.64 | £263 |
| 5 | Taunton | 59.5% | 8,259 | 59.2% | 11.9 wk | 1.68 | £276 |
| 6 | Chippenham | 56.4% | 9,629 | 56.0% | 7.7 wk | 1.77 | £304 |
| 7 | Bristol (Avonmouth) | 55.5% | 9,400 | 55.4% | 8 wk | 1.80 | £314 |
| 8 | Trowbridge | 55.2% | 3,074 | 56.4% | 8.9 wk | 1.81 | £316 |
| 9 | Newton Abbot | 53.8% | 6,591 | 54.5% | 6.8 wk | 1.86 | £331 |
| 10 | Poole | 53.4% | 10,375 | 53.0% | 7.1 wk | 1.87 | £336 |
| 11 | Bristol (Kingswood) | 51.9% | 14,863 | 53.4% | 5.3 wk | 1.93 | £353 |
| 12 | Barnstaple | 51.4% | 5,562 | 53.8% | 8 wk | 1.95 | £359 |
| 13 | Swindon | 51.1% | 12,857 | 50.8% | 11.7 wk | 1.96 | £363 |
| 14 | Salisbury | 48.5% | 6,630 | 48.3% | 5.3 wk | 2.06 | £396 |
| 15 | Gloucester | 47.8% | 7,420 | 48.3% | 19 wk | 2.09 | £405 |
| 16 | Bodmin | 47.5% | 6,392 | 45.2% | 3.6 wk | 2.11 | £409 |
| 17 | Exeter | 46.8% | 8,679 | 45.6% | 7.6 wk | 2.14 | £419 |
| 18 | Penzance | 46.5% | 507 | 43.4% | 21 wk | 2.15 | £423 |
| 19 | Launceston | 46.3% | 3,991 | 47.0% | 7 wk | 2.16 | £426 |
| 20 | Cheltenham | 43.2% | 5,161 | 42.9% | 13.5 wk | 2.31 | £474 |
| 21 | Plymouth | 40.7% | 11,167 | 38.8% | 7 wk | 2.46 | £519 |
| 22 | Camborne | 40.6% | 6,271 | 37.8% | 5.6 wk | 2.46 | £520 |
17-year-olds in South West pass at 62.0%. 25-year-olds pass at 50.3%.
DVSA table DRT122D splits each centre by single year of age. Across South West that is a 11.7-point spread, against 14.9 points nationally, from 34,231 tests at 17 and 2,001 at 25. On this page’s arithmetic, at the £36 South West lesson rate, the gap is worth £117 in expected fees and retake lessons.
Aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at the 21 South West centres in that table. Cells the agency withholds are left out, never estimated, so this curve rests only on published counts. Each centre page below carries its own age split where its cells are large enough to publish. The national age curve and how to read it.
South West, pass rate by age
- Age 17
- 62.0%
- Age 25
- 50.3%
- Gap
- 11.7 pts
Where South West sits among the eleven DVSA regions.
Other regions
Local cost guides for South West
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) 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.
The age curve is aggregated from the single-year-of-age cells DVSA published for the 21 South West centres in DRT122D. DVSA withholds the counts in small age cells; those cells are excluded here rather than estimated or back-filled from a block total.