Southend-On-Sea Theory Test Centre: 45.29% pass rate
DVSA recorded 24,458 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 11,076 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £50.79 of test fees.
Southend-On-Sea is a high-volume centre, working through roughly 2,038 sittings a month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 24,458 car theory tests and issued 11,076 passes, a pass rate of 45.29% against the national 44.84%. That is the 88th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 7th of 13 in the East of England.
Every theory pass here takes 2.21 sittings on average, so £50.79 of DVSA fees, within pennies of the £51.29 national figure. None of that is a difference in price. DVSA charges £23 a sitting everywhere, and there is no discount for a retake, so the only thing that moves the bill is the number of attempts. The 13,382 fails recorded at Southend-On-Sea account for £308k of the £563k paid in fees here.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 47.10% here against 43.71%, a difference of 3.39 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £3.79 more per pass at this centre.
Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 42.7% in June 2025 to 47.5% in January 2026, with the heaviest month being April 2025 at 2,176 sittings. Nothing about the test changes between months, so the spread reflects who happened to book.
Against 2024/25 the rate rose by 0.49 points, from 44.80% to 45.29%. DVSA has published 5 years for this centre. Back in 2021/22 the rate was 48.70%, so today's fee bill per pass is £3.56 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 3.4 points.
The nearest other theory centre is Chatham, about 13 miles away, where the rate was 44.07%. Chelmsford, 17 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 47.86%, a difference worth £2.73 per pass on paper, and still not worth the journey. The questions, the clips and the pass mark are set nationally and do not vary by building, so a centre's rate describes the people who booked there rather than the difficulty of the test.
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 Southend-On-Sea, the average candidate here needs 2.21 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £38 an hour on this site's South East band, the closest published row to East of England, the theory fee is 3.5% of the £1,470 minimum.
Across the East of England as a whole, DVSA recorded 270,776 car theory tests at 18 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 45.81% and £50.21 of fees per pass. Southend-On-Sea is below that regional figure by 0.52 points.
Southend-On-Sea at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 24,458
- Passes
- 11,076
- Pass rate
- 45.29%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 88 of 165
- Rank in East of England
- 7 of 13
- Male pass rate13,117 tests
- 43.71%
- Female pass rate11,341 tests
- 47.10%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +3.39 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (44.80%)
- +0.49 pts
- Years published
- 5
- Region
- East of England
- County or unitary
- Southend-on-Sea
- Nearest other centre
- Chatham, 13 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Southend-On-Sea
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Southend-On-Sea'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 | Southend-On-Sea | East of England | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 45.29% | 45.81% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.21 | 2.18 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £50.79 | £50.21 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £27.79 | £27.21 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£0.50 | -£1.08 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £307,786 | £3.4m | £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 Southend-On-Sea's rate the theory fee works out at 3.5% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £38 an hour on this site's South East band, the closest published row to East of England. 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.
Southend-On-Sea month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month January 2026 at 47.5%, weakest June 2025 at 42.7%, busiest April 2025 with 2,176 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 2,176 | 976 | 44.9% | £51.28 |
| May 25 | 1,891 | 818 | 43.3% | £53.17 |
| Jun 25 | 2,124 | 906 | 42.7% | £53.92 |
| Jul 25 | 2,098 | 946 | 45.1% | £51.01 |
| Aug 25 | 2,066 | 949 | 45.9% | £50.07 |
| Sep 25 | 2,121 | 962 | 45.4% | £50.71 |
| Oct 25 | 2,134 | 954 | 44.7% | £51.45 |
| Nov 25 | 2,094 | 924 | 44.1% | £52.12 |
| Dec 25 | 1,520 | 716 | 47.1% | £48.83 |
| Jan 26 | 1,938 | 921 | 47.5% | £48.40 |
| Feb 26 | 2,175 | 997 | 45.8% | £50.18 |
| Mar 26 | 2,121 | 1,007 | 47.5% | £48.44 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Southend-On-Sea. 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 | 24,458 | 11,076 | 45.29% | £50.79 |
| 2024/25 | 22,489 | 10,074 | 44.80% | £51.34 |
| 2023/24 | 22,165 | 9,945 | 44.87% | £51.26 |
| 2022/23 | 20,133 | 8,897 | 44.19% | £52.05 |
| 2021/22 | 18,734 | 9,119 | 48.70% | £47.25 |
Theory test centres near Southend-On-Sea
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatham | 13 mi | 32,955 | 44.07% | £52.19 |
| Chelmsford | 17 mi | 22,482 | 47.86% | £48.06 |
| Canterbury | 24 mi | 26,438 | 47.41% | £48.51 |
| Colchester | 25 mi | 15,487 | 45.14% | £50.95 |
| Sidcup | 27 mi | 42,577 | 46.01% | £49.99 |
More centres on the the East of England page, which covers 18 centres and 270,776 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.