Bodmin Theory Test Centre: 52.60% pass rate

DVSA recorded 1,460 car theory tests at Bodmin between April 2025 and March 2026, of which 768 were passes and 692 were fails. The pass rate was 52.60%, against 44.84% across Great Britain. That is the 6th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 1st of 22 in the South West. Bodmin is a small centre, seating around 122 candidates a month.

Fees are the same £23 nationwide, which makes the pass rate the whole of the cost story. Because more candidates pass first time here, the fee bill per licence is lighter than average: £43.72 of DVSA fees for every theory pass, £7.57 less than the national £51.29. Put another way, 47.4% of the £34k paid in theory fees at Bodmin last year bought a test that did not end in a pass, or £16k.

The recorded gender split opens a wide gap between the two groups at Bodmin: 56.13% for the 718 tests sat by women and 49.19% for the 742 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £5.78 of fee difference per licence.

Month to month the rate moves about. October 2025 was the strongest month here at 60.0%, June 2025 the weakest at 46.1%, and September 2025 the busiest with 152 sittings. A swing of 13.9 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 3.82 points, from 48.78% to 52.60%. DVSA has published 10 years for this centre. Back in 2016/17 the rate was 47.71%, so today's fee bill per pass is £4.49 lower than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has risen 4.9 points.

Bodmin sits 19 miles from Launceston, its closest neighbour, which recorded 48.40%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than Bodmin, so there is nothing to chase even on paper. 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.

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 £43.72 of fees a pass takes at Bodmin is 3.0% 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. Bodmin is above that regional figure by 4.70 points.