Harrogate Theory Test Centre: 51.32% pass rate
DVSA recorded 7,802 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 4,004 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £44.82 of test fees.
DVSA recorded 7,802 car theory tests at Harrogate between April 2025 and March 2026, of which 4,004 were passes and 3,798 were fails. The pass rate was 51.32%, against 44.84% across Great Britain. That is the 14th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 1st of 11 in the Yorkshire and The Humber. Harrogate is a mid-sized centre, taking about 650 candidates a month.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 54.67% here against 48.48%, a difference of 6.19 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £5.37 more per pass at this centre.
Month to month the rate moves about. April 2025 was the strongest month here at 56.6%, November 2025 the weakest at 47.1%, and July 2025 the busiest with 770 sittings. A swing of 9.6 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 held roughly level, from 51.29% to 51.32%. DVSA has published 19 years for this centre. Back in 2007/08 the rate was 71.23%, so today's fee bill per pass is £12.53 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 19.9 points.
The nearest other theory centre is Leeds, about 13 miles away, where the rate was 43.33%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than Harrogate, so there is nothing to chase even on paper. 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.
Across the Yorkshire and The Humber as a whole, DVSA recorded 263,516 car theory tests at 13 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 42.87% and £53.65 of fees per pass. Harrogate is above that regional figure by 8.45 points.
Harrogate at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 7,802
- Passes
- 4,004
- Pass rate
- 51.32%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 14 of 165
- Rank in Yorkshire and The Humber
- 1 of 11
- Male pass rate4,224 tests
- 48.48%
- Female pass rate3,578 tests
- 54.67%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +6.19 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (51.29%)
- +0.03 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- Yorkshire and The Humber
- County or unitary
- North Yorkshire
- Nearest other centre
- Leeds, 13 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Harrogate
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Harrogate'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 | Harrogate | Yorkshire and The Humber | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 51.32% | 42.87% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 1.95 | 2.33 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £44.82 | £53.65 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £21.82 | £30.65 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£6.47 | +£2.36 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £87,354 | £3.5m | £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 Harrogate's rate the theory fee works out at 3.0% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £30 an hour on this site's North East band, the closest published row to Yorkshire and The Humber. 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.
Harrogate month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month April 2025 at 56.6%, weakest November 2025 at 47.1%, busiest July 2025 with 770 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 759 | 430 | 56.6% | £40.60 |
| May 25 | 636 | 336 | 52.8% | £43.54 |
| Jun 25 | 580 | 286 | 49.3% | £46.64 |
| Jul 25 | 770 | 408 | 53.0% | £43.41 |
| Aug 25 | 622 | 303 | 48.7% | £47.21 |
| Sep 25 | 620 | 309 | 49.8% | £46.15 |
| Oct 25 | 641 | 317 | 49.5% | £46.51 |
| Nov 25 | 595 | 280 | 47.1% | £48.88 |
| Dec 25 | 537 | 266 | 49.5% | £46.43 |
| Jan 26 | 695 | 356 | 51.2% | £44.90 |
| Feb 26 | 662 | 363 | 54.8% | £41.94 |
| Mar 26 | 685 | 350 | 51.1% | £45.01 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Harrogate. 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 | 7,802 | 4,004 | 51.32% | £44.82 |
| 2024/25 | 6,727 | 3,450 | 51.29% | £44.85 |
| 2023/24 | 6,598 | 3,475 | 52.67% | £43.67 |
| 2022/23 | 6,405 | 3,327 | 51.94% | £44.28 |
| 2021/22 | 8,451 | 4,658 | 55.10% | £41.73 |
| 2020/21 | 3,276 | 2,040 | 62.27% | £36.94 |
| 2019/20 | 5,440 | 2,822 | 51.88% | £44.34 |
| 2018/19 | 5,118 | 2,729 | 53.32% | £43.13 |
| 2017/18 | 5,460 | 2,969 | 54.38% | £42.30 |
| 2016/17 | 5,540 | 2,883 | 52.04% | £44.20 |
| 2015/16 | 5,900 | 3,125 | 52.97% | £43.42 |
| 2014/15 | 5,153 | 2,815 | 54.63% | £42.10 |
| 2013/14 | 4,510 | 2,608 | 57.83% | £39.77 |
| 2012/13 | 3,727 | 2,369 | 63.56% | £36.18 |
| 2011/12 | 4,168 | 2,699 | 64.76% | £35.52 |
| 2010/11 | 4,019 | 2,631 | 65.46% | £35.13 |
| 2009/10 | 4,095 | 2,824 | 68.96% | £33.35 |
| 2008/09 | 3,873 | 2,735 | 70.62% | £32.57 |
| 2007/08 | 4,439 | 3,162 | 71.23% | £32.29 |
Theory test centres near Harrogate
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leeds | 13 mi | 56,711 | 43.33% | £53.09 |
| Bradford | 16 mi | 42,749 | 37.55% | £61.25 |
| York | 19 mi | 12,896 | 50.59% | £45.46 |
| Northallerton | 24 mi | 4,868 | 47.00% | £48.94 |
| Huddersfield | 26 mi | 28,154 | 42.75% | £53.80 |
More centres on the the Yorkshire and The Humber page, which covers 13 centres and 263,516 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.