Bala test centre: 61.6% pass rate, £240 to get through it.

Bala is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 607 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 374 were passes, giving 61.6%. 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 38th of 308 nationally and 4th of 21 in Wales.

That is 11.6 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 9.2 points above the 52.4% Wales 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 61.6% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.62 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Bala pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.62 times, or £101. Add 0.62 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Wales rate of £32 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £140. The test cycle at Bala is therefore about £240. Testing here therefore saves about £108 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Bala ran to a median 11.4 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 0.5 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.62 expected retakes that is roughly 7.1 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 305 standard slots inside the booking window here and 13.1% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 352 first attempts at Bala, 228 passed, a rate of 64.8%, which is 3.2 points above the all-attempts figure. 13 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.69% 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 Bala has risen by 7.0 points, from 54.6% to 61.6%. Test volume has shrunk over the same span, from 716 to 607 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £60 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 65.4% and female candidates at 57.9%, a gap of 7.5 points across 298 and 309 tests. Automatic tests made up 15.5% of the workload and passed at 45.7%, 15.9 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 51.0% in February 2026 to 75.9% in August 2025, a 24.9-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Wales, Pwllheli runs 6.5 points higher at 68.1%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £44 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.