Preston Theory Test Centre: 43.86% pass rate
DVSA recorded 54,263 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 23,802 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £52.43 of test fees.
Of the 54,263 car theory tests sat at Preston in the year to March 2026, 23,802 ended in a pass and 30,461 in a fail. 43.86% is 0.98 points below the 44.84% national figure. That is the 117th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 8th of 13 in the North West. Preston is one of the busiest theory test centres in Great Britain, handling about 4,522 sittings in an average month.
Fees are the same £23 nationwide, which makes the pass rate the whole of the cost story. Every theory pass here takes 2.28 sittings on average, so £52.43 of DVSA fees, within pennies of the £51.29 national figure. Put another way, 56.1% of the £1.2m paid in theory fees at Preston last year bought a test that did not end in a pass, or £701k.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 46.99% here against 41.34%, a difference of 5.65 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £6.69 more per pass at this centre.
Month to month the rate moves about. March 2026 was the strongest month here at 46.5%, November 2025 the weakest at 42.3%, and September 2025 the busiest with 5,022 sittings. A swing of 4.2 points across one year is normal in a sample this size and is not a reason to time a booking.
Against 2024/25 the rate held roughly level, from 43.99% to 43.86%. DVSA has published 19 years for this centre. Back in 2007/08 the rate was 65.47%, so today's fee bill per pass is £17.30 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 21.6 points.
Preston sits 17 miles from Bolton, its closest neighbour, which recorded 41.66%. Liverpool, 27 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 45.59%, a difference worth £1.98 per pass on paper, and still not worth the journey. Travelling changes nothing you can bank: every centre runs the same question bank and the same 43-out-of-50 pass mark, and DVSA charges the same £23 wherever you sit it.
What does change the bill is preparation. One retake costs £23, which is 5 times the £4.99 price of the official DVSA revision app and more than the £15 print book. On the April 2025 to March 2026 figures for Preston, the average candidate here needs 2.28 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £31 an hour on this site's North West band, the theory fee is 3.6% of the £1,470 minimum.
Across the North West as a whole, DVSA recorded 356,059 car theory tests at 14 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 44.07% and £52.19 of fees per pass. Preston is below that regional figure by 0.21 points.
Preston at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 54,263
- Passes
- 23,802
- Pass rate
- 43.86%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 117 of 165
- Rank in North West
- 8 of 13
- Male pass rate30,009 tests
- 41.34%
- Female pass rate24,254 tests
- 46.99%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +5.65 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (43.99%)
- -0.13 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- North West
- County or unitary
- Lancashire
- Nearest other centre
- Bolton, 17 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Preston
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Preston's own published pass rate. It describes what theory testing costs the candidates who book here on average. It is not a prediction for one person, and it is not a reason to travel: the question bank and the pass mark are national.
| Measure | Preston | North West | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 43.86% | 44.07% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.28 | 2.27 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £52.43 | £52.19 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £29.43 | £29.19 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | +£1.14 | +£0.90 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £700,603 | £4.6m | £37.1m |
Sittings per pass is tests conducted divided by passes, so it counts everyone who sat at this centre, including repeat attempts. Fees per pass is that figure multiplied by the £23 DVSA fee. The fee is ours, from the fee page; the counts are DVSA's.
One retake buys nothing
A second sitting is another full £23. There is no retake discount. The official DVSA revision app is £4.99, so a retake costs about 5 times as much as the thing that would have prevented it.
Share of the learner bill
At Preston's rate the theory fee works out at 3.6% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £31 an hour on this site's North West band. See the full budget.
The two-year clock
A theory pass lasts 2 years. Miss that window before the practical and the £23 is due again. Retakes also need 3 clear working days between attempts, so a fail costs time as well as money.
Preston month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month March 2026 at 46.5%, weakest November 2025 at 42.3%, busiest September 2025 with 5,022 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 4,682 | 2,062 | 44.0% | £52.22 |
| May 25 | 4,623 | 2,042 | 44.2% | £52.07 |
| Jun 25 | 4,473 | 1,964 | 43.9% | £52.38 |
| Jul 25 | 4,825 | 2,056 | 42.6% | £53.98 |
| Aug 25 | 4,704 | 2,069 | 44.0% | £52.29 |
| Sep 25 | 5,022 | 2,162 | 43.0% | £53.43 |
| Oct 25 | 4,847 | 2,159 | 44.5% | £51.64 |
| Nov 25 | 4,325 | 1,830 | 42.3% | £54.36 |
| Dec 25 | 3,210 | 1,377 | 42.9% | £53.62 |
| Jan 26 | 4,375 | 1,878 | 42.9% | £53.58 |
| Feb 26 | 4,439 | 1,999 | 45.0% | £51.07 |
| Mar 26 | 4,738 | 2,204 | 46.5% | £49.44 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Preston. The fee is held constant on purpose, so the only thing moving the right-hand column is how often candidates passed.
| Year | Tests | Passes | Pass rate | Fees per pass at today's £23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 54,263 | 23,802 | 43.86% | £52.43 |
| 2024/25 | 52,846 | 23,246 | 43.99% | £52.29 |
| 2023/24 | 47,610 | 21,465 | 45.09% | £51.01 |
| 2022/23 | 43,261 | 19,415 | 44.88% | £51.25 |
| 2021/22 | 41,528 | 20,482 | 49.30% | £46.63 |
| 2020/21 | 11,684 | 6,460 | 55.29% | £41.60 |
| 2019/20 | 25,982 | 12,285 | 47.28% | £48.64 |
| 2018/19 | 23,925 | 11,504 | 48.08% | £47.83 |
| 2017/18 | 26,076 | 12,695 | 48.68% | £47.24 |
| 2016/17 | 26,167 | 12,800 | 48.92% | £47.02 |
| 2015/16 | 25,784 | 12,827 | 49.75% | £46.23 |
| 2014/15 | 22,374 | 11,660 | 52.11% | £44.13 |
| 2013/14 | 21,173 | 11,175 | 52.78% | £43.58 |
| 2012/13 | 16,723 | 10,070 | 60.22% | £38.20 |
| 2011/12 | 18,717 | 11,615 | 62.06% | £37.06 |
| 2010/11 | 19,156 | 12,214 | 63.76% | £36.07 |
| 2009/10 | 19,204 | 12,271 | 63.90% | £35.99 |
| 2008/09 | 19,344 | 12,673 | 65.51% | £35.11 |
| 2007/08 | 22,533 | 14,752 | 65.47% | £35.13 |
Theory test centres near Preston
The five closest centres by road-distance proxy. DVSA publishes no address for a theory test centre, so distances are measured town centre to town centre and are indicative. They are here for context, not as a shopping list: the fee and the test are identical at all of them.
| Centre | Distance | Tests | Pass rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bolton | 17 mi | 46,465 | 41.66% | £55.22 |
| Burnley | 19 mi | 1,401 | 44.40% | £51.81 |
| Liverpool | 27 mi | 69,093 | 45.59% | £50.45 |
| Manchester | 27 mi | 88,658 | 42.45% | £54.19 |
| Barrow | 32 mi | 3,666 | 43.04% | £53.43 |
More centres on the the North West page, which covers 14 centres and 356,059 tests, or in the full directory.
Where these figures come from
Test volumes, passes, pass rates and gender splits on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, taken from the GOV.UK statistical data set Driving test and theory test data: cars:
- DRT112A, Car theory test pass rates by gender and month: test centres. Updated 2026-07-17, covering April 2007 to March 2026.
- DRT111A, Car theory tests conducted, passed and pass rates by financial quarter and financial year: Great Britain. Updated 2026-09-03, covering April 2007 to June 2026.
Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year, the most recent full year DVSA publishes at centre level. Snapshot taken 2026-09-05. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
DVSA publishes no region or address for theory test centres. Each centre is named after its town, and the town's country, region, county and centre point come from OS Open Names. Source: Ordnance Survey Open Names, via postcodes.io, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every pound on this page is theorytestcost.com's own arithmetic on the £23 DVSA fee and the cost figures published elsewhere on this site. DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money here comes from DVSA.
theorytestcost.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: theory tests in Northern Ireland are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison, and withholds a centre's figures entirely where publishing them could identify an individual.