Hexham Theory Test Centre: 54.30% pass rate
DVSA recorded 221 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 120 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £42.36 of test fees.
Hexham is one of the smallest centres DVSA reports, with fewer than 20 sittings in a typical month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 221 car theory tests and issued 120 passes, a pass rate of 54.30% against the national 44.84%. That is the 2nd highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 1st 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. Because more candidates pass first time here, the fee bill per licence is lighter than average: £42.36 of DVSA fees for every theory pass, £8.93 less than the national £51.29. The 101 fails at Hexham last year came to £2k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £5k taken at this centre in total.
Against 2024/25 the rate rose by 8.85 points, from 45.45% to 54.30%. DVSA has published 5 years for this centre. Back in 2021/22 the rate was 56.90%, so today's fee bill per pass is £1.94 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 2.6 points.
The nearest other theory centre is Newcastle, about 19 miles away, where the rate was 45.91%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than Hexham, 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 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. Hexham is above that regional figure by 10.53 points.
Hexham at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 221
- Passes
- 120
- Pass rate
- 54.30%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 2 of 165
- Rank in North East
- 1 of 7
- Male pass rate117 tests
- 45.30%
- Female pass rate104 tests
- 64.42%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +19.12 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (45.45%)
- +8.85 pts
- Years published
- 5
- Region
- North East
- County or unitary
- Northumberland
- Nearest other centre
- Newcastle, 19 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Hexham
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Hexham'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 | Hexham | North East | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 54.30% | 43.77% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 1.84 | 2.28 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £42.36 | £52.55 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £19.36 | £29.55 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£8.93 | +£1.26 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £2,323 | £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 Hexham's rate the theory fee works out at 2.9% 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.
Hexham month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month June 2025 at 59.6%, weakest September 2025 at 50.0%, busiest March 2026 with 50 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 25 | 47 | 28 | 59.6% | £38.61 |
| Sep 25 | 26 | 13 | 50.0% | £46.00 |
| Nov 25 | 49 | 25 | 51.0% | £45.08 |
| Dec 25 | 25 | 14 | 56.0% | £41.07 |
| Mar 26 | 50 | 29 | 58.0% | £39.66 |
7 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 Hexham. 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 | 221 | 120 | 54.30% | £42.36 |
| 2024/25 | 154 | 70 | 45.45% | £50.60 |
| 2023/24 | 202 | 112 | 55.45% | £41.48 |
| 2022/23 | 487 | 251 | 51.54% | £44.63 |
| 2021/22 | 65 | 37 | 56.90% | £40.41 |
Theory test centres near Hexham
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newcastle | 19 mi | 45,324 | 45.91% | £50.10 |
| Bishop Auckland | 27 mi | 579 | 47.50% | £48.43 |
| Sunderland | 29 mi | 22,878 | 43.32% | £53.09 |
| Carlisle | 33 mi | 7,165 | 41.69% | £55.17 |
| Penrith | 34 mi | 242 | 50.83% | £45.25 |
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.