Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) test centre: 41.6% pass rate, £482 to get through it.

Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) is a mid-sized centre, putting 6,646 candidates through the car practical test in 2025/26. 2,768 passed, so the centre finished the year on 41.6% and 286th of 308 nationally, 21st of 26 within West Midlands.

That is 8.4 percentage points below the 50.03% national figure, and 4.5 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 41.6% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.40 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.40 times, or £149. Add 1.40 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 £333. The test cycle at Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) is therefore about £482. Testing here therefore costs about £120 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.

A fail at Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 17.6 weeks in July 2026, 5.7 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 1.40 expected retakes that is about 24.7 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 2,908 standard slots inside the booking window here and 9.9% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 3,032 candidates sat their first test at Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) and 1,213 passed, 40.0%, which is 1.6 points below the all-attempts rate. 10 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 0.33% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Stoke-on-Trent (Newcastle-Under-Lyme) has fallen by 3.8 points, from 45.4% to 41.6%. Volume has been steady, 6,320 tests then against 6,646 now. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £60 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 43.4% and female candidates at 40.0%, a gap of 3.4 points across 3,258 and 3,388 tests. Automatic tests made up 29.2% of the workload and passed at 35.5%, 6.2 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 38.8% in May 2025 to 44.9% in November 2025, a 6.1-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in West Midlands, Rugby runs 9.8 points higher at 51.4%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £137 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.