Kendal (Oxenholme Road) test centre: 65.1% pass rate, £215 to get through it.

Kendal (Oxenholme Road) is a small centre by DVSA standards: 2,231 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 1,453 were passes, giving 65.1%. 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 22nd of 308 nationally and 2nd of 31 in North West.

That is 15.1 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 16.1 points above the 49.0% North West 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 65.1% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.54 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Kendal (Oxenholme Road) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.54 times, or £95. Add 0.54 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the North West rate of £32 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £120. The test cycle at Kendal (Oxenholme Road) is therefore about £215. Testing here therefore saves about £133 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Kendal (Oxenholme Road) ran to a median 10.7 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 1.2 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.54 expected retakes that is roughly 5.7 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 1,047 standard slots inside the booking window here and 22.7% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 1,217 first attempts at Kendal (Oxenholme Road), 816 passed, a rate of 67.0%, which is 1.9 points above the all-attempts figure. 74 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 6.08% 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 Kendal (Oxenholme Road) has risen by 2.3 points, from 62.9% to 65.1%. Volume has been steady, 2,090 tests then against 2,231 now. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £16 to the average candidate.

Male and female candidates are within a point of each other at Kendal (Oxenholme Road), 65.1% against 65.2%. Automatic tests made up 15.3% of the workload and passed at 53.2%, 11.9 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 57.0% in March 2026 to 69.3% in April 2025, a 12.4-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

None of the similarly sized centres in North West runs more than five points ahead of Kendal (Oxenholme Road) on pass rate, so travelling elsewhere is unlikely to pay for itself once you add an unfamiliar route, the travel and the settling-in lessons. The cheaper lever here is preparation on the roads your instructor already knows.