Williton Theory Test Centre: 46.46% pass rate

Of the 650 car theory tests sat at Williton in the year to March 2026, 302 ended in a pass and 348 in a fail. 46.46% is 1.62 points above the 44.84% national figure. That is the 71st highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 16th of 22 in the South West. Williton is one of the smallest centres DVSA reports, with fewer than 60 sittings in a typical month.

Fees are the same £23 nationwide, which makes the pass rate the whole of the cost story. Every theory pass at Williton takes 2.15 sittings on average, so £49.50 of DVSA fees, a little under the £51.29 national figure. Put another way, 53.5% of the £15k paid in theory fees at Williton last year bought a test that did not end in a pass, or £8k.

The recorded gender split separates the two groups at Williton: 48.34% for the 302 tests sat by women and 44.83% for the 348 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £3.73 of fee difference per licence.

Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 38.4% in July 2025 to 60.0% in June 2025, with the heaviest month being February 2026 at 80 sittings. Nothing about the test changes between months, so the spread reflects who happened to book.

The direction of travel matters more than any single year. Williton slipped 0.56 points from 2024/25, and across the 5 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 51.80% in 2021/22 to 46.46% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £44.40 to £49.50.

The nearest other theory centre is Taunton, about 14 miles away, where the rate was 46.37%. Exeter, 32 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 50.62%, a difference worth £4.06 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.

The lever a candidate actually controls is revision, not location. At £23 a sitting, a single failed attempt costs more than the £4.99 official app and the £15 book put together, and the £49.50 of fees a pass takes at Williton is 3.4% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive on this site's South West lesson band. There is also a clock: a theory pass is valid for 2 years, and letting it lapse before the practical means paying the £23 again from scratch.

Across the South West as a whole, DVSA recorded 208,634 car theory tests at 22 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 47.90% and £48.02 of fees per pass. Williton is below that regional figure by 1.44 points.