Chester Theory Test Centre: 47.63% pass rate

DVSA recorded 20,210 car theory tests at Chester between April 2025 and March 2026, of which 9,627 were passes and 10,583 were fails. The pass rate was 47.63%, against 44.84% across Great Britain. That is the 50th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 3rd of 13 in the North West. Chester is a high-volume centre, working through roughly 1,684 sittings a month.

Every theory pass at Chester takes 2.10 sittings on average, so £48.28 of DVSA fees, a little under 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 10,583 fails recorded at Chester account for £243k of the £465k paid in fees here.

The recorded gender split separates the two groups at Chester: 50.30% for the 9,102 tests sat by women and 45.45% for the 11,108 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £4.88 of fee difference per licence.

Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 44.9% in November 2025 to 51.9% in February 2026, with the heaviest month being September 2025 at 1,917 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. Chester held roughly level year on year from 2024/25, and across the 19 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 69.20% in 2007/08 to 47.63% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £33.24 to £48.28.

Chester sits 11 miles from Wrexham, its closest neighbour, which recorded 43.68%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than Chester, 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 £48.28 of fees a pass takes at Chester is 3.3% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive on this site's North 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 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. Chester is above that regional figure by 3.56 points.