Southwark Theory Test Centre: 51.96% pass rate
DVSA recorded 68,847 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 35,776 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £44.26 of test fees.
DVSA recorded 68,847 car theory tests at Southwark between April 2025 and March 2026, of which 35,776 were passes and 33,071 were fails. The pass rate was 51.96%, against 44.84% across Great Britain. That is the 12th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 1st of 8 in London. Southwark is one of the busiest theory test centres in Great Britain, handling about 5,737 sittings in an average month.
Because more candidates pass first time here, the fee bill per licence is lighter than average: £44.26 of DVSA fees for every theory pass, £7.03 less than the national £51.29. 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 33,071 fails recorded at Southwark account for £761k of the £1.6m paid in fees here.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 54.48% here against 50.27%, a difference of 4.21 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £3.54 more per pass at this centre.
Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 49.3% in December 2025 to 54.0% in September 2025, with the heaviest month being October 2025 at 6,380 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. Southwark held roughly level year on year from 2024/25, and across the 12 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 67.01% in 2007/08 to 51.96% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £34.32 to £44.26.
Southwark sits 2 miles from Bethnal Green, its closest neighbour, which recorded 46.88%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than Southwark, 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.
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 Southwark, the average candidate here needs 1.92 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £42 an hour on this site's London band, the theory fee is 3.0% of the £1,470 minimum.
Across London as a whole, DVSA recorded 481,311 car theory tests at 8 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 44.60% and £51.57 of fees per pass. Southwark is above that regional figure by 7.36 points.
Southwark at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 68,847
- Passes
- 35,776
- Pass rate
- 51.96%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 12 of 165
- Rank in London
- 1 of 8
- Male pass rate41,125 tests
- 50.27%
- Female pass rate27,722 tests
- 54.48%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +4.21 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (51.73%)
- +0.23 pts
- Years published
- 12
- Region
- London
- County or unitary
- Greater London
- Nearest other centre
- Bethnal Green, 2 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Southwark
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Southwark'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 | Southwark | London | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 51.96% | 44.60% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 1.92 | 2.24 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £44.26 | £51.57 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £21.26 | £28.57 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£7.03 | +£0.28 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £760,633 | £6.1m | £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 Southwark's rate the theory fee works out at 3.0% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £42 an hour on this site's London 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.
Southwark month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month September 2025 at 54.0%, weakest December 2025 at 49.3%, busiest October 2025 with 6,380 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 5,720 | 2,888 | 50.5% | £45.55 |
| May 25 | 5,666 | 2,876 | 50.8% | £45.31 |
| Jun 25 | 5,746 | 3,001 | 52.2% | £44.04 |
| Jul 25 | 5,729 | 3,004 | 52.4% | £43.86 |
| Aug 25 | 6,107 | 3,247 | 53.2% | £43.26 |
| Sep 25 | 5,781 | 3,121 | 54.0% | £42.60 |
| Oct 25 | 6,380 | 3,371 | 52.8% | £43.53 |
| Nov 25 | 5,558 | 2,805 | 50.5% | £45.57 |
| Dec 25 | 4,512 | 2,222 | 49.3% | £46.70 |
| Jan 26 | 5,775 | 3,030 | 52.5% | £43.84 |
| Feb 26 | 5,749 | 3,050 | 53.0% | £43.35 |
| Mar 26 | 6,124 | 3,161 | 51.6% | £44.56 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Southwark. 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 | 68,847 | 35,776 | 51.96% | £44.26 |
| 2024/25 | 66,976 | 34,645 | 51.73% | £44.46 |
| 2023/24 | 61,294 | 32,007 | 52.22% | £44.05 |
| 2022/23 | 60,362 | 30,061 | 49.80% | £46.18 |
| 2021/22 | 58,959 | 31,403 | 53.30% | £43.18 |
| 2013/14 | 44,723 | 24,574 | 54.95% | £41.86 |
| 2012/13 | 39,787 | 24,515 | 61.62% | £37.33 |
| 2011/12 | 42,839 | 27,429 | 64.03% | £35.92 |
| 2010/11 | 38,143 | 25,259 | 66.22% | £34.73 |
| 2009/10 | 37,428 | 25,063 | 66.96% | £34.35 |
| 2008/09 | 35,581 | 24,342 | 68.41% | £33.62 |
| 2007/08 | 38,526 | 25,816 | 67.01% | £34.32 |
Theory test centres near Southwark
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bethnal Green | 2 mi | 40,236 | 46.88% | £49.06 |
| Morden | 8 mi | 42,181 | 51.68% | £44.51 |
| Ilford | 8 mi | 92,249 | 40.18% | £57.24 |
| North Finchley | 8 mi | 67,769 | 43.70% | £52.63 |
| Croydon | 9 mi | 43,848 | 45.83% | £50.19 |
More centres on the London page, which covers 8 centres and 481,311 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.