Wrexham Theory Test Centre: 43.68% pass rate

Of the 8,134 car theory tests sat at Wrexham in the year to March 2026, 3,553 ended in a pass and 4,581 in a fail. 43.68% is 1.16 points below the 44.84% national figure. That is the 121st highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 7th of 17 in Wales. Wrexham is a mid-sized centre, taking about 678 candidates a month.

Fees are the same £23 nationwide, which makes the pass rate the whole of the cost story. Every theory pass here takes 2.29 sittings on average, so £52.65 of DVSA fees, within pennies of the £51.29 national figure. Put another way, 56.3% of the £187k paid in theory fees at Wrexham last year bought a test that did not end in a pass, or £105k.

The recorded gender split separates the two groups at Wrexham: 45.43% for the 3,716 tests sat by women and 42.21% for the 4,418 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £3.86 of fee difference per licence.

Month to month the rate moves about. February 2026 was the strongest month here at 47.2%, September 2025 the weakest at 38.7%, and December 2025 the busiest with 855 sittings. A swing of 8.4 points across one year is normal in a sample this size and is not a reason to time a booking.

The direction of travel matters more than any single year. Wrexham rose 0.38 points from 2024/25, and across the 5 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 46.50% in 2021/22 to 43.68% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £49.46 to £52.65.

Wrexham sits 11 miles from Chester, its closest neighbour, which recorded 47.63%. That is the highest of the five nearest centres, a difference worth £4.37 per pass on paper, and it is 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 Wrexham, the average candidate here needs 2.29 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £30 an hour on this site's Wales band, the theory fee is 3.6% of the £1,470 minimum.

Across Wales as a whole, DVSA recorded 125,666 car theory tests at 17 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 42.98% and £53.51 of fees per pass. Wrexham is above that regional figure by 0.70 points.