Featherstone test centre: 36.4% pass rate, £585 to get through it.

Featherstone is a high-volume centre, putting 13,193 candidates through the car practical test in 2025/26. 4,807 passed, so the centre finished the year on 36.4% and 304th of 308 nationally, 24th of 26 within West Midlands.

That is 13.6 percentage points below the 50.03% national figure, and 9.8 points below the 46.2% average for West Midlands. 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 36.4% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.74 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Featherstone pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.74 times, or £170. Add 1.74 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the West Midlands rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £415. The test cycle at Featherstone is therefore about £585. Testing here therefore costs about £223 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.

Waiting time at Featherstone ran to a median 11.9 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 0.0 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. Across 1.74 expected retakes that is roughly 20.8 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 3,706 standard slots inside the booking window here and 5.9% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 5,266 candidates sat their first test at Featherstone and 1,850 passed, 35.1%, which is 1.3 points below the all-attempts rate. 59 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 1.12% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Featherstone has fallen by 1.4 points, from 37.8% to 36.4%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 7,699 to 13,193 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £30 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 38.2% and female candidates at 34.3%, a gap of 4.0 points across 7,242 and 5,951 tests. Automatic tests accounted for 28.3% of the 13,193 tests and passed at 35.3%, close enough to the overall rate that gearbox choice is a comfort decision here, not a pass-rate one. Month to month the rate ran from 32.9% in May 2025 to 39.3% in October 2025, a 6.4-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in West Midlands, Dudley runs 8.8 points higher at 45.2%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £159 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.