West Wickham (London) test centre: 51.6% pass rate, £402 to get through it.
DVSA conducted 12,249 car practical tests here between April 2025 and March 2026, and 6,320 candidates passed. On the expected-attempts arithmetic that is 1.94 attempts, £120 in DVSA fees and £282 of retake lessons before a licence.
- Pass rate
- 51.6%
- Tests conducted
- 12,249
- National rank
- 164
- Median wait
- 10.6 wk
+1.6 pts vs national
6,320 passes
of 308 ranked centres
July 2026
What passing at West Wickham (London) costs
Expected cost of the test cycle for the average candidate at a 51.6% centre.
- Expected attempts (1 ÷ pass rate)1.94
- DVSA fees at £62 weekday£120
- Retake lessons (0.94 × 7 hr × £43)£282
- Test cycle at this centre£402
- Against a national-average centre-£23
- Extra queue time from retakes9.9 wk
Add the parts that do not change with the centre and the full bill from provisional to licence at London lesson rates is about £2,394: £34 provisional, £23 theory, 45 hours of tuition at £43 (£1,935) and the test cycle above. Full cost stack.
What 51.6% at West Wickham (London) actually means for your budget.
12,249 candidates took the car practical test at West Wickham (London) during 2025/26 and 6,320 of them passed, a pass rate of 51.6%. That is a high-volume centre, ranked 164th of 308 on pass rate, and 8th of 26 inside London.
That lands within 1.6 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 2.8 points above the 48.8% London average, which makes West Wickham (London) an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.
Turn 51.6% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.94 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at West Wickham (London) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.94 times, or £120. Add 0.94 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the London rate of £43 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £282. The test cycle at West Wickham (London) is therefore about £402. Testing here therefore saves about £23 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.
Waiting time at West Wickham (London) ran to a median 10.6 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 1.3 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.94 expected retakes that is roughly 9.9 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 3,933 standard slots inside the booking window here and 5.1% of them were still free to book.
First attempts track the headline closely: 3,231 passes from 6,172 first tests at West Wickham (London), 52.4% against 51.6% for all attempts. 141 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 2.28% of them.
Since 2021/22 the pass rate at West Wickham (London) has risen by 4.6 points, from 47.0% to 51.6%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 6,261 to 12,249 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £69 to the average candidate.
Male and female candidates are within a point of each other at West Wickham (London), 51.2% against 52.1%. Automatic tests accounted for 40.2% of the 12,249 tests and passed at 50.8%, close enough to the overall rate that gearbox choice is a comfort decision here, not a pass-rate one. Month to month the rate ran from 49.1% in May 2025 to 54.6% in January 2026, a 5.5-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.
None of the similarly sized centres in London runs more than five points ahead of West Wickham (London) 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.
West Wickham (London) vs its region and the country.
- Rank in London
- 8 of 26
- First-attempt rate
- 52.4%
- Zero-fault first passes
- 141
- Automatic pass rate
- 50.8%
- Male candidates
- 51.2%
- Female candidates
- 52.1%
+2.8 pts vs region
6,172 first tests
2.28% of first attempts
40.2% of tests here
6,861 tests
5,388 tests
Up 4.6 points since 2021/22.
Dashed line: the 50.03% national pass rate for 2025/26.
Weeks between booking and taking the test, DVSA table DRT122F. Latest reading 10.6 weeks, 1.3 below the 11.9-week median across all centres.
DVSA withholds the age 25 cell at West Wickham (London), so there is nothing to compare it with.
West Wickham (London) conducted 12,249 tests across all ages, but split into single years the age 25 cell is one DVSA withholds, so there is no published figure to compare and this page does not invent one. 8 of the 10 age rows carry counts; the rest are marked withheld in the table below.
Across London as a whole the same two ages are 61.0% and 49.9%, which on this page's arithmetic is £294 against £427 in fees and retake lessons at the £43 London rate. That is regional context for West Wickham (London), not a figure for West Wickham (London), and it is offered as exactly that.
17-year-olds here pass 4.8 points above the 63.6% that 17-year-olds manage nationally. Against London, where the same age passes 61.0%, they are 7.4 points ahead. Either way, budgeting a 17-year-old against this centre's all-ages 51.6% is pessimistic by 16.8 points.
DVSA withheld the counts for ages 16 and 25 at West Wickham (London), which it does where a cell is small enough that publishing the numbers could identify candidates. For age 25 the agency still printed a pass rate; those rates appear in the table below exactly as published, and are used for nothing else on this page, because a percentage with no denominator cannot carry a cost estimate.
- Age 17 here
- 68.4%
- Age 25 here
- n/a
- Age gap
- abstains
- Age 17 vs country
- +4.8 pts
1,261 tests
counts withheld
national gap +14.9 pts
63.6% nationally
Pass rate by age, London
This centre's own cells are mostly withheld, so the curve shown is the London aggregate from the same table.
What each age costs at West Wickham (London), on the same arithmetic as the rest of this page.
Expected attempts is 1 ÷ the pass rate for that age, fees are £62 an attempt and retake lessons are 7 hours at the London rate of £43. Ages where DVSA withheld the counts are shown as withheld and are not priced: a rate the agency would not put a denominator against is not a rate to budget from.
| Age | Tests conducted | Passes | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | withheld | withheld | not published | not priced | not priced |
| 17 | 1,261 | 862 | 68.4% | 1.46 | £230 |
| 18 | 1,294 | 731 | 56.5% | 1.77 | £342 |
| 19 | 908 | 441 | 48.6% | 2.06 | £446 |
| 20 | 735 | 372 | 50.6% | 1.98 | £416 |
| 21 | 628 | 328 | 52.2% | 1.91 | £394 |
| 22 | 628 | 325 | 51.8% | 1.93 | £400 |
| 23 | 558 | 295 | 52.9% | 1.89 | £386 |
| 24 | 453 | 254 | 56.1% | 1.78 | £346 |
| 25 | withheld | withheld | 48.0% | not priced | not priced |
| Under 26 | 6,906 | 3,820 | 55.3% | 1.81 | £355 |
| All ages | 12,249 | 6,320 | 51.6% | 1.94 | £402 |
The under-26 row is DVSA’s own block total from DRT122D and counts the withheld cells, so it will exceed the sum of the ages printed above it wherever a cell is withheld (here: ages 16 and 25). The all-ages row is DRT122A, the figure the rest of this page uses. Nothing on this table is estimated or back-filled.
Read it at the level that holds up
Of the 10 age rows DVSA publishes for West Wickham (London), 8 carry counts and 8 clear the 100-test floor, which is why the age 17 against age 25 comparison and its cost consequence are left blank above rather than filled with a number that would not survive a second look. Pooled across all 26 London centres the same cells are large enough to read, and the national age curve rests on 301,662 tests at age 17 alone.
Every published financial year at West Wickham (London).
| Financial year | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 12,249 | 6,320 | 51.6% | 1.94 | £402 |
| 2024/25 | 11,147 | 5,670 | 50.9% | 1.96 | £412 |
| 2023/24 | 11,225 | 5,488 | 48.9% | 2.05 | £441 |
| 2022/23 | 6,748 | 3,283 | 48.6% | 2.06 | £445 |
| 2021/22 | 6,261 | 2,944 | 47.0% | 2.13 | £471 |
| 2020/21 | 1,782 | 885 | 49.7% | 2.01 | £430 |
| 2019/20 | 11,902 | 5,449 | 45.8% | 2.18 | £492 |
| 2018/19 | 11,239 | 5,289 | 47.1% | 2.12 | £470 |
| 2017/18 | 9,823 | 4,984 | 50.7% | 1.97 | £414 |
| 2016/17 | 10,179 | 4,997 | 49.1% | 2.04 | £438 |
Cost columns apply today’s £62 fee and the current £43 lesson rate to each year’s pass rate, so the column isolates what the pass rate does to the bill. The fee itself has moved over time; see fee history.
A 5.5-point swing across the year.
Monthly figures are why a single quarter is a poor guide. Nothing about the centre changed between May 2025 and January 2026; the mix of candidates did.
| Month | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | 1,017 | 501 | 49.3% |
| May 2025 | 914 | 449 | 49.1% |
| June 2025 | 1,010 | 519 | 51.4% |
| July 2025 | 1,125 | 558 | 49.6% |
| August 2025 | 1,003 | 531 | 52.9% |
| September 2025 | 937 | 467 | 49.8% |
| October 2025 | 1,112 | 593 | 53.3% |
| November 2025 | 1,097 | 552 | 50.3% |
| December 2025 | 1,081 | 550 | 50.9% |
| January 2026 | 1,099 | 600 | 54.6% |
| February 2026 | 892 | 486 | 54.5% |
| March 2026 | 962 | 514 | 53.4% |
The five London centres closest in size to West Wickham (London).
Matched on annual test volume rather than distance, because a centre doing 12,249 tests a year faces a comparable road and traffic mix. Cost column uses the London lesson rate of £43 throughout, so the only variable is the pass rate.
| Centre | Pass rate | Tests | Median wait | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Wickham (London) (this centre) | 51.6% | 12,249 | 10.6 wk | £402 |
| Barnet (London) | 49.9% | 12,397 | 21.1 wk | £427 |
| Isleworth (Fleming Way) | 50.4% | 12,687 | 16.3 wk | £420 |
| Wood Green (London) | 46.8% | 11,379 | 12.6 wk | £474 |
| Chingford (London) | 39.9% | 13,120 | 9.6 wk | £609 |
| Bromley (London) | 52.9% | 13,228 | 9.3 wk | £385 |
Higher pass rate in London
- Erith (London)51.6%
- Uxbridge (London)52.3%
- Yeading (London)52.8%
- Bromley (London)52.9%
Lower pass rate in London
- Mill Hill (London)51.4%
- Hendon (London)51.4%
- Morden (London)51.0%
- Isleworth (Fleming Way)50.4%
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), DRT122E (Automatic car driving test pass rates by gender: test centres, 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.
Age figures are single years of age from DRT122D and are reproduced exactly as published, withheld cells included. DVSA replaces the counts in small age cells with “..”, in most cases while still printing that cell’s pass rate; those cells are shown here as withheld and are excluded from every comparison, ranking and cost figure on this page. Nothing withheld is reconstructed from the block total. West Wickham (London) does not have enough published age volume for a centre-level comparison, so the age curve shown is the London aggregate.