Bishop Auckland Theory Test Centre: 47.50% pass rate
DVSA recorded 579 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 275 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £48.43 of test fees.
Bishop Auckland is one of the smallest centres DVSA reports, with fewer than 50 sittings in a typical month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 579 car theory tests and issued 275 passes, a pass rate of 47.50% against the national 44.84%. That is the 53rd highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 2nd of 7 in the North East.
The theory test fee is £23 at every centre in Great Britain, so what changes from place to place is not the price of one sitting but how many sittings a licence takes. Every theory pass at Bishop Auckland takes 2.11 sittings on average, so £48.43 of DVSA fees, a little under the £51.29 national figure. The 304 fails at Bishop Auckland last year came to £7k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £13k taken at this centre in total.
Month to month the rate moves about. September 2025 was the strongest month here at 53.3%, July 2025 the weakest at 43.5%, and February 2026 the busiest with 56 sittings. A swing of 9.9 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 rose by 0.78 points, from 46.72% to 47.50%. DVSA has published 5 years for this centre. Back in 2021/22 the rate was 55.00%, so today's fee bill per pass is £6.61 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 7.5 points.
Across the North East as a whole, DVSA recorded 105,784 car theory tests at 7 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 43.77% and £52.55 of fees per pass. Bishop Auckland is above that regional figure by 3.73 points.
Bishop Auckland at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 579
- Passes
- 275
- Pass rate
- 47.50%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 53 of 165
- Rank in North East
- 2 of 7
- Male pass rate291 tests
- 40.89%
- Female pass rate288 tests
- 54.17%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +13.28 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (46.72%)
- +0.78 pts
- Years published
- 5
- Region
- North East
- County or unitary
- County Durham
- Nearest other centre
- Middlesbrough, 19 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Bishop Auckland
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Bishop Auckland'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 | Bishop Auckland | North East | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 47.50% | 43.77% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.11 | 2.28 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £48.43 | £52.55 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £25.43 | £29.55 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£2.86 | +£1.26 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £6,992 | £1.4m | £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 Bishop Auckland's rate the theory fee works out at 3.3% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £30 an hour on this site's North East 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.
Bishop Auckland month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month September 2025 at 53.3%, weakest July 2025 at 43.5%, busiest February 2026 with 56 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 48 | 25 | 52.1% | £44.16 |
| May 25 | 53 | 26 | 49.1% | £46.88 |
| Jul 25 | 46 | 20 | 43.5% | £52.90 |
| Aug 25 | 51 | 26 | 51.0% | £45.12 |
| Sep 25 | 45 | 24 | 53.3% | £43.13 |
| Oct 25 | 48 | 21 | 43.8% | £52.57 |
| Dec 25 | 40 | 21 | 52.5% | £43.81 |
| Jan 26 | 46 | 24 | 52.2% | £44.08 |
| Feb 26 | 56 | 29 | 51.8% | £44.41 |
| Mar 26 | 45 | 23 | 51.1% | £45.00 |
2 months of this year are withheld by DVSA at this centre because the numbers involved were small enough to risk identifying an individual.
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Bishop Auckland. 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 | 579 | 275 | 47.50% | £48.43 |
| 2024/25 | 503 | 235 | 46.72% | £49.23 |
| 2023/24 | 467 | 213 | 45.61% | £50.43 |
| 2022/23 | 1,060 | 515 | 48.58% | £47.34 |
| 2021/22 | 231 | 127 | 55.00% | £41.83 |
Theory test centres near Bishop Auckland
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Middlesbrough | 19 mi | 34,351 | 40.94% | £56.18 |
| Sunderland | 20 mi | 22,878 | 43.32% | £53.09 |
| Newcastle | 22 mi | 45,324 | 45.91% | £50.10 |
| Northallerton | 24 mi | 4,868 | 47.00% | £48.94 |
| Hexham | 27 mi | 221 | 54.30% | £42.36 |
More centres on the the North East page, which covers 7 centres and 105,784 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.