Penzance Theory Test Centre: 48.93% pass rate
DVSA recorded 1,909 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 934 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £47.01 of test fees.
DVSA recorded 1,909 car theory tests at Penzance between April 2025 and March 2026, of which 934 were passes and 975 were fails. The pass rate was 48.93%, against 44.84% across Great Britain. That is the 38th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 12th of 22 in the South West. Penzance is a small centre, seating around 159 candidates a month.
Every theory pass at Penzance takes 2.04 sittings on average, so £47.01 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 975 fails recorded at Penzance account for £22k of the £44k paid in fees here.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 52.01% here against 46.47%, a difference of 5.54 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £5.27 more per pass at this centre.
Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 41.3% in August 2025 to 54.1% in July 2025, with the heaviest month being March 2026 at 197 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. Penzance held roughly level year on year from 2024/25, and across the 19 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 69.60% in 2007/08 to 48.93% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £33.05 to £47.01.
Penzance sits 24 miles from Truro, its closest neighbour, which recorded 50.20%. Bodmin, 44 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 52.60%, a difference worth £3.29 per pass on paper, and still not worth the journey. 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.
What does change the bill is preparation. One retake costs £23, which is 5 times the £4.99 price of the official DVSA revision app and more than the £15 print book. On the April 2025 to March 2026 figures for Penzance, the average candidate here needs 2.04 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £35 an hour on this site's South West band, the theory fee is 3.2% of the £1,470 minimum.
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. Penzance is above that regional figure by 1.03 points.
Penzance at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 1,909
- Passes
- 934
- Pass rate
- 48.93%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 38 of 165
- Rank in South West
- 12 of 22
- Male pass rate1,063 tests
- 46.47%
- Female pass rate846 tests
- 52.01%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +5.54 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (49.03%)
- -0.10 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- South West
- County or unitary
- Cornwall
- Nearest other centre
- Truro, 24 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Penzance
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Penzance'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 | Penzance | South West | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 48.93% | 47.90% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.04 | 2.09 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £47.01 | £48.02 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £24.01 | £25.02 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£4.28 | -£3.27 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £22,425 | £2.5m | £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 Penzance's rate the theory fee works out at 3.2% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £35 an hour on this site's South West 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.
Penzance month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month July 2025 at 54.1%, weakest August 2025 at 41.3%, busiest March 2026 with 197 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 167 | 90 | 53.9% | £42.68 |
| May 25 | 113 | 57 | 50.4% | £45.60 |
| Jun 25 | 177 | 83 | 46.9% | £49.05 |
| Jul 25 | 159 | 86 | 54.1% | £42.52 |
| Aug 25 | 155 | 64 | 41.3% | £55.70 |
| Sep 25 | 171 | 76 | 44.4% | £51.75 |
| Oct 25 | 157 | 73 | 46.5% | £49.47 |
| Nov 25 | 194 | 98 | 50.5% | £45.53 |
| Dec 25 | 169 | 86 | 50.9% | £45.20 |
| Jan 26 | 112 | 56 | 50.0% | £46.00 |
| Feb 26 | 138 | 68 | 49.3% | £46.68 |
| Mar 26 | 197 | 97 | 49.2% | £46.71 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Penzance. 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 | 1,909 | 934 | 48.93% | £47.01 |
| 2024/25 | 1,701 | 834 | 49.03% | £46.91 |
| 2023/24 | 1,687 | 828 | 49.08% | £46.86 |
| 2022/23 | 1,735 | 835 | 48.13% | £47.79 |
| 2021/22 | 1,894 | 1,042 | 55.00% | £41.81 |
| 2020/21 | 871 | 518 | 59.47% | £38.67 |
| 2019/20 | 2,191 | 1,076 | 49.11% | £46.83 |
| 2018/19 | 2,008 | 961 | 47.86% | £48.06 |
| 2017/18 | 2,145 | 1,042 | 48.58% | £47.35 |
| 2016/17 | 2,280 | 1,153 | 50.57% | £45.48 |
| 2015/16 | 2,630 | 1,352 | 51.41% | £44.74 |
| 2014/15 | 2,220 | 1,115 | 50.23% | £45.79 |
| 2013/14 | 1,883 | 996 | 52.89% | £43.48 |
| 2012/13 | 1,572 | 993 | 63.17% | £36.41 |
| 2011/12 | 1,717 | 1,051 | 61.21% | £37.57 |
| 2010/11 | 1,712 | 1,041 | 60.81% | £37.83 |
| 2009/10 | 1,644 | 1,104 | 67.15% | £34.25 |
| 2008/09 | 1,566 | 1,043 | 66.60% | £34.53 |
| 2007/08 | 2,026 | 1,410 | 69.60% | £33.05 |
Theory test centres near Penzance
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Truro | 24 mi | 10,246 | 50.20% | £45.81 |
| Bodmin | 44 mi | 1,460 | 52.60% | £43.72 |
| Launceston | 63 mi | 1,535 | 48.40% | £47.52 |
| Plymouth | 64 mi | 13,278 | 48.95% | £46.98 |
| Kingsbridge | 79 mi | 1,117 | 52.19% | £44.07 |
More centres on the the South West page, which covers 22 centres and 208,634 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.