Banff test centre: 57.5% pass rate, £284 to get through it.

Banff is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 280 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 161 were passes, giving 57.5%. 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 69th of 308 nationally and 31st of 67 in Scotland.

That is 7.5 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 8.2 points above the 49.3% Scotland 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 57.5% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.74 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Banff pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.74 times, or £108. Add 0.74 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £176. The test cycle at Banff is therefore about £284. Testing here therefore saves about £78 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

A fail at Banff costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 14 weeks in July 2026, 2.1 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 0.74 expected retakes that is about 10.3 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 64 standard slots inside the booking window here and 1.6% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 166 candidates sat their first test at Banff and 91 passed, 54.8%, which is 2.7 points below the all-attempts rate. 4 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 2.41% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Banff has fallen by 8.4 points, from 65.9% to 57.5%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 217 to 280 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £67 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 60.0% and female candidates at 54.2%, a gap of 5.8 points across 160 and 120 tests. Automatic tests made up 8.9% of the workload and passed at 52.0%, 5.5 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 54.2% in July 2025 to 60.0% in May 2025, a 5.8-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Girvan runs 14.5 points higher at 72.0%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £105 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.