Stornoway test centre: 66.6% pass rate, £213 to get through it.

Stornoway is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 344 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 229 were passes, giving 66.6%. 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 18th of 308 nationally and 14th of 67 in Scotland.

That is 16.5 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 17.2 points above the 49.3% Scotland 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 66.6% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.50 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Stornoway pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.50 times, or £93. Add 0.50 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £120. The test cycle at Stornoway is therefore about £213. Testing here therefore saves about £149 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Stornoway ran to a median 8.1 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 3.8 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.50 expected retakes that is roughly 4.1 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 53 standard slots inside the booking window here and 15.1% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 216 first attempts at Stornoway, 146 passed, a rate of 67.6%, which is 1.0 points above the all-attempts figure. 12 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 5.56% 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 Stornoway has risen by 6.8 points, from 59.8% to 66.6%. Volume has been steady, 393 tests then against 344 now. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £51 to the average candidate.

Male and female candidates are within a point of each other at Stornoway, 66.2% against 67.1%. Month to month the rate ran from 50.0% in May 2025 to 78.1% in November 2025, a 28.1-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

None of the similarly sized centres in Scotland runs more than five points ahead of Stornoway 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.