South East test centres: 53.2% average, a 23.3-point spread and £287 between the best and worst.
DVSA ran 243,284 car practical tests across 32 South East centres in April 2025 to March 2026 and 129,353 candidates passed. The gap between Tunbridge Wells at 64.5% and Banbury at 41.3% is worth about £287 of expected fees and retake lessons.
- Regional pass rate
- 53.2%
- Test centres
- 32
- Median wait
- 10 wk
- Lesson rate
- £34-£42
+3.1 pts vs national
32 with full data
across the region, July 2026
per hour, manual
South East learner budget
At the South East average of 53.2% and £38 an hour.
- Provisional licence£34
- Theory test£23
- 45 hours at £38£1,710
- DVSA fees (1.88 attempts)£117
- Retake lessons£234
- Typical South East total£2,118
Excludes learner insurance and costs after passing. Full cost stack.
South East passes above the national rate.
Across 32 centres, South East recorded 53.2% in April 2025 to March 2026, 3.1 percentage points above the 50.03% figure for Great Britain, which ranks it 1 of 11 DVSA regions. That is 243,284 tests and 129,353 passes.
The regional average hides the choice that actually matters. Tunbridge Wells finished the year on 64.5% from 5,726 tests, Banbury on 41.3% from 9,069. On the expected-attempts model the first implies 1.55 attempts and £242 of fees and retake lessons, the second 2.42 attempts and £529. The 23.3-point spread is therefore a £287 decision.
Waiting time varies as widely as the pass rate. Lee On The Solent showed a median 20 weeks between booking and test in the latest DVSA reading, against 4.6 weeks at High Wycombe. The regional median is 10 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.
Gillingham is the busiest centre in South East at 14,886 tests, passing 56.4%. Lesson rates across South East run £34 to £42 an hour for manual tuition, which is what turns a percentage point of pass rate into a pound figure: at £38 an hour, each extra expected attempt costs £328 in fee and follow-up lessons.
All 32 South East test centres, ranked.
Test cycle cost is the expected DVSA fees plus retake lessons at the South East rate of £38 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 | Tunbridge Wells | 64.5% | 5,726 | 65.4% | 10 wk | 1.55 | £242 |
| 2 | Lee On The Solent | 63.2% | 8,502 | 65.5% | 20 wk | 1.58 | £253 |
| 3 | Chichester | 61.6% | 6,672 | 63.3% | 4.7 wk | 1.62 | £267 |
| 4 | Maidstone | 60.2% | 8,053 | 61.6% | 10 wk | 1.66 | £279 |
| 5 | Worthing | 59.8% | 8,495 | 60.2% | 10.1 wk | 1.67 | £283 |
| 6 | Farnborough | 59.7% | 10,482 | 60.1% | 16 wk | 1.68 | £283 |
| 7 | Sevenoaks | 59.0% | 6,740 | 60.9% | 10.4 wk | 1.69 | £290 |
| 8 | Guildford | 57.1% | 4,542 | 56.8% | 9.6 wk | 1.75 | £309 |
| 9 | Basingstoke | 56.8% | 5,009 | 57.7% | 19.6 wk | 1.76 | £312 |
| 10 | Greenham | 56.5% | 3,931 | 55.9% | 5.2 wk | 1.77 | £315 |
| 11 | Gillingham | 56.4% | 14,886 | 57.6% | 9.9 wk | 1.77 | £316 |
| 12 | Herne Bay | 55.9% | 10,674 | 56.3% | 7 wk | 1.79 | £320 |
| 13 | Eastbourne | 55.4% | 6,031 | 56.6% | 13.7 wk | 1.80 | £326 |
| 14 | Reading | 55.4% | 9,237 | 55.4% | 13.9 wk | 1.80 | £326 |
| 15 | Newport (Isle of Wight) | 54.1% | 3,616 | 56.4% | 8.9 wk | 1.85 | £340 |
| 16 | Redhill Aerodrome | 53.9% | 5,408 | 53.5% | 10 wk | 1.85 | £342 |
| 17 | Chertsey (London) | 52.9% | 9,082 | 52.5% | 15.6 wk | 1.89 | £354 |
| 18 | Portsmouth | 52.8% | 13,518 | 52.9% | 13 wk | 1.89 | £355 |
| 19 | Hastings (Ore) | 52.4% | 3,892 | 51.7% | 17.1 wk | 1.91 | £360 |
| 20 | Winchester | 52.2% | 4,602 | 50.0% | 7.1 wk | 1.91 | £362 |
| 21 | High Wycombe | 51.5% | 3,534 | 49.0% | 4.6 wk | 1.94 | £371 |
| 22 | Bletchley | 51.5% | 9,415 | 49.6% | 14.6 wk | 1.94 | £371 |
| 23 | Slough (London) | 50.8% | 10,509 | 48.4% | 6 wk | 1.97 | £379 |
| 24 | Oxford (Cowley) | 50.6% | 5,419 | 49.0% | 5 wk | 1.98 | £382 |
| 25 | Southampton (Maybush) | 50.3% | 10,480 | 50.6% | 13.1 wk | 1.99 | £386 |
| 26 | Aylesbury | 49.3% | 5,255 | 48.2% | 5 wk | 2.03 | £400 |
| 27 | Ashford (Kent) | 46.2% | 5,475 | 45.9% | 6.3 wk | 2.16 | £444 |
| 28 | Canterbury | 45.8% | 4,670 | 46.3% | 5.3 wk | 2.18 | £450 |
| 29 | Burgess Hill | 45.5% | 11,237 | 45.6% | 14.9 wk | 2.20 | £455 |
| 30 | Crawley | 42.7% | 11,305 | 42.7% | 10.4 wk | 2.34 | £502 |
| 31 | Folkestone | 42.4% | 7,818 | 42.2% | 7.9 wk | 2.36 | £508 |
| 32 | Banbury | 41.3% | 9,069 | 39.6% | 18.1 wk | 2.42 | £529 |
17-year-olds in South East pass at 64.6%. 25-year-olds pass at 53.0%.
DVSA table DRT122D splits each centre by single year of age. Across South East that is a 11.6-point spread, against 14.9 points nationally, from 45,332 tests at 17 and 5,204 at 25. On this page’s arithmetic, at the £38 South East lesson rate, the gap is worth £110 in expected fees and retake lessons.
Aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at the 32 South East 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 East, pass rate by age
- Age 17
- 64.6%
- Age 25
- 53.0%
- Gap
- 11.6 pts
Where South East sits among the eleven DVSA regions.
Other regions
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 32 South East 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.