West Midlands test centres: 46.2% average, a 24.5-point spread and £366 between the best and worst.
DVSA ran 231,032 car practical tests across 26 West Midlands centres in April 2025 to March 2026 and 106,720 candidates passed. The gap between Hereford at 58.8% and Wolverhampton at 34.3% is worth about £366 of expected fees and retake lessons.
- Regional pass rate
- 46.2%
- Test centres
- 26
- Median wait
- 11.4 wk
- Lesson rate
- £30-£38
-3.8 pts vs national
26 with full data
across the region, July 2026
per hour, manual
West Midlands learner budget
At the West Midlands average of 46.2% and £34 an hour.
- Provisional licence£34
- Theory test£23
- 45 hours at £34£1,530
- DVSA fees (2.16 attempts)£134
- Retake lessons£277
- Typical West Midlands total£1,998
Excludes learner insurance and costs after passing. Full cost stack.
West Midlands passes below the national rate.
Across 26 centres, West Midlands recorded 46.2% in April 2025 to March 2026, 3.8 percentage points below the 50.03% figure for Great Britain, which ranks it 11 of 11 DVSA regions. That is 231,032 tests and 106,720 passes.
The regional average hides the choice that actually matters. Hereford finished the year on 58.8% from 4,110 tests, Wolverhampton on 34.3% from 11,561. On the expected-attempts model the first implies 1.70 attempts and £272 of fees and retake lessons, the second 2.92 attempts and £638. The 24.5-point spread is therefore a £366 decision.
Waiting time varies as widely as the pass rate. Birmingham (Kingstanding) showed a median 23 weeks between booking and test in the latest DVSA reading, against 3.1 weeks at Birmingham (Cocks Moors). The regional median is 11.4 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.
Birmingham (Garretts Green) is the busiest centre in West Midlands at 22,480 tests, passing 44.4%. Lesson rates across West Midlands run £30 to £38 an hour for manual tuition, which is what turns a percentage point of pass rate into a pound figure: at £34 an hour, each extra expected attempt costs £300 in fee and follow-up lessons.
All 26 West Midlands test centres, ranked.
Test cycle cost is the expected DVSA fees plus retake lessons at the West Midlands rate of £34 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 | Hereford | 58.8% | 4,110 | 60.0% | 5.6 wk | 1.70 | £272 |
| 2 | Ludlow | 58.7% | 5,051 | 61.6% | 10.1 wk | 1.70 | £273 |
| 3 | Birmingham (Shirley) | 56.6% | 9,385 | 58.3% | 16.2 wk | 1.77 | £292 |
| 4 | Burton on Trent | 54.7% | 7,273 | 56.5% | 17 wk | 1.83 | £310 |
| 5 | Birmingham (Cocks Moors) | 53.5% | 486 | 55.5% | 3.1 wk | 1.87 | £323 |
| 6 | Nuneaton | 53.2% | 6,764 | 54.6% | 11.4 wk | 1.88 | £326 |
| 7 | Lichfield | 53.0% | 5,944 | 53.3% | 20.4 wk | 1.89 | £328 |
| 8 | Oswestry | 52.4% | 1,851 | 54.3% | 11.4 wk | 1.91 | £335 |
| 9 | Worcester | 51.9% | 11,590 | 52.3% | 11.1 wk | 1.93 | £340 |
| 10 | Rugby | 51.4% | 6,664 | 55.0% | 9.4 wk | 1.95 | £346 |
| 11 | Redditch | 51.4% | 4,483 | 51.5% | 4.4 wk | 1.95 | £346 |
| 12 | Shrewsbury | 51.0% | 5,064 | 53.2% | 6.3 wk | 1.96 | £350 |
| 13 | Telford | 48.9% | 4,963 | 48.1% | 22.6 wk | 2.04 | £375 |
| 14 | Birmingham (Kingstanding) | 48.5% | 16,133 | 47.2% | 23 wk | 2.06 | £380 |
| 15 | Warwick (Wedgenock House) | 48.5% | 15,070 | 47.3% | 18 wk | 2.06 | £380 |
| 16 | Birmingham (Kings Heath) | 46.8% | 9,072 | 45.6% | 11.7 wk | 2.14 | £404 |
| 17 | Stafford | 45.8% | 5,365 | 45.8% | 17.7 wk | 2.18 | £417 |
| 18 | Dudley | 45.2% | 13,721 | 45.1% | 14.3 wk | 2.21 | £426 |
| 19 | Birmingham (Garretts Green) | 44.4% | 22,480 | 42.0% | 7 wk | 2.25 | £438 |
| 20 | Birmingham (South Yardley) | 42.8% | 14,471 | 40.5% | 10 wk | 2.33 | £462 |
| 21 | Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) | 41.6% | 6,646 | 40.0% | 17.6 wk | 2.40 | £482 |
| 22 | Stoke-On-Trent (Cobridge) | 40.6% | 8,413 | 38.7% | 10.4 wk | 2.46 | £501 |
| 23 | Coventry | 40.0% | 13,771 | 38.3% | 6.8 wk | 2.50 | £512 |
| 24 | Featherstone | 36.4% | 13,193 | 35.1% | 11.9 wk | 2.74 | £585 |
| 25 | Wednesbury | 35.0% | 7,508 | 31.5% | 10.3 wk | 2.86 | £620 |
| 26 | Wolverhampton | 34.3% | 11,561 | 33.4% | 12.7 wk | 2.92 | £638 |
17-year-olds in West Midlands pass at 62.0%. 25-year-olds pass at 44.1%.
DVSA table DRT122D splits each centre by single year of age. Across West Midlands that is a 17.9-point spread, against 14.9 points nationally, from 26,704 tests at 17 and 7,631 at 25. On this page’s arithmetic, at the £34 West Midlands lesson rate, the gap is worth £196 in expected fees and retake lessons.
Aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at the 26 West Midlands 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.
West Midlands, pass rate by age
- Age 17
- 62.0%
- Age 25
- 44.1%
- Gap
- 17.9 pts
Where West Midlands sits among the eleven DVSA regions.
Other regions
Local cost guides for West Midlands
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 26 West Midlands 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.