Wanstead has the highest pass rate of the three DVSA centres serving East London, at 44.4% overall and 42.1% in automatic cars. Goodmayes is a fraction behind and Chingford is the hardest of the three. The spread between best and worst is about four and a half percentage points, which is real but much smaller than the difference between knowing the routes and not knowing them.
Wanstead has the highest pass rate of the three DVSA test centres that serve East London. That is the short answer, and it has been the short answer for a while.
The longer answer is more useful, because the question behind it is usually not "which centre passes the most people" but "where should I book". Those are different questions, and the second one is not settled by the first.
The Three Centres Side By Side
These are the DVSA's own published figures for the most recent full reporting year. The overall column covers every car test conducted at the centre. The automatic column covers automatic tests only, which is the number to read if you are learning in an automatic.
| Centre | Overall | Automatic | Nearest station | Routes built around |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wanstead | 44.4% | 42.1% | Snaresbrook (Central line) | Multi-lane approaches on the A12 and A406, timed bus lanes, quiet residential grids for manoeuvres |
| Goodmayes | 43.7% | 41.5% | Goodmayes (Elizabeth line) | Box junctions on the A118, busy shopping frontages, densely parked side streets |
| Chingford | 39.9% | 38.3% | Chingford (London Overground) | Gradients at Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill, narrow streets off Larkshall Road |
Source: DVSA, Driving test and theory test data: cars, tables DRT122A (overall) and DRT122E (automatic), April 2025 to March 2026.
Two patterns are worth noticing before the ranking. Every one of these centres fails more candidates than it passes, which is normal for London and not a local scandal. And at every one of them the automatic rate sits a point or two below the overall rate, which is also a national pattern rather than anything about these three roads.
What A Four And A Half Point Gap Is Actually Worth
Line up a hundred candidates at Chingford and a hundred at Wanstead and roughly four or five more people walk out of Wanstead with a pass. That is the entire size of the effect.
It is a real difference. It is not a large one, and it is nothing like the difference people imagine when they hear that one centre is "easier". If you are ready, you are very likely to pass at any of the three. If you are not ready, the four and a half points will not save you at the friendliest centre in the country.
Set that against the things that move your own odds by much more than five points: whether you have driven the centre's routes before, whether you can hold a lane through a multi-lane junction without a late correction, whether you check a mirror before you change direction every single time rather than most times. Those are worth far more than the choice of postcode.
Why Pass Rates Differ Between Centres
Three things drive most of the variation, and only one of them is about the roads.
Route difficulty
Every centre tests the same syllabus, but not every centre has the same raw material to test it on. Chingford's routes run over genuine hills, and gradients generate a category of fault that flat routes simply do not produce: rolling back on a hill start, creeping in a queue on a slope, riding the brake and losing control of the car's position. Wanstead's routes have no equivalent, but they have more multi-lane decision points, which produce a different fault entirely.
Neither is harder in the abstract. They are harder for different people. A candidate who has spent every lesson on flat, wide roads will find Chingford unforgiving. A candidate who has never had to commit to a lane two hundred metres early will find Wanstead unforgiving.
Candidate mix
Centres do not draw from identical populations. Access matters: a centre on a fast rail line collects candidates from a wider radius, including people testing away from where they learned. A centre that is awkward to reach is used mostly by people who learned locally and know the roads. That alone can move a headline rate without a single road changing.
Urban density
The more junctions, parked cars, cyclists, buses, box junctions and pedestrian crossings a route contains, the more opportunities there are for a fault to be marked in thirty-five minutes. This is not the examiner being harsher. It is arithmetic. A test through Goodmayes Road at four in the afternoon presents more decisions per mile than a test on a rural route, and every decision is a chance to be marked.
It is also why East London learners tend to arrive at the test better prepared for real driving than the pass rates suggest. The apprenticeship is harder than average, and it shows up later rather than on the day.
Two Things The Table Cannot Tell You
The DVSA publishes the rate for the centre and the year. It does not publish the two variables candidates most often ask about, and it is better to say so than to guess at them.
Time of day
There is no published breakdown of pass rates by hour, so nobody can honestly tell you that a 9am test is easier than a 2pm one. What is knowable is that the roads are not the same object at different hours.
School traffic, the school run around Goodmayes Road, the afternoon build-up on the A406, and the way a timed bus lane switches on and off all change what the route asks of you.
The useful conclusion is not "book this hour". It is: book an hour you have actually driven in, repeatedly, on those roads. A candidate who has only ever had Saturday morning lessons and books a Tuesday rush hour test has changed the test more than they have changed the centre.
How much the numbers move
These are annual figures covering a full year of tests, and they shift from year to year at every centre. The ordering here has been stable, but the gaps are narrow enough that a couple of points of movement would not be surprising in either direction.
Treat them as a description of a centre's character rather than a fixed property of it. If you want the current position, the DVSA dataset is published openly and updated each year, and the tables to open are DRT122A for overall rates and DRT122E for automatic.
Test Centre Shopping, And Why It Usually Backfires
The strategy is familiar: find the centre with the best published rate within travelling distance, book there, drive there on the morning, pass. It sounds rational, and it fails often enough to be worth spelling out why.
- You give up route familiarity, which is the one advantage that is genuinely under your control
- You add an unknown journey on the morning of the test, when your tolerance for delay is at its lowest
- Your instructor may not teach those roads, so the car you sit the test in is on unfamiliar ground too
- You often trade a few points of published pass rate for roads you have never seen, which is a bad exchange
- You may end up further down a waiting list at the popular centre than at the one near you
There is a version of this that is not shopping and is perfectly sensible: choosing between two centres you can realistically practise at, on grounds that include the pass rate. That is just choosing. What does not work is treating the DVSA table as a league table and booking the top of it regardless of geography.
If you are weighing this up properly, the criteria that actually decide it are set out in how to choose your driving test centre.
The Automatic Column Is The One To Read
If you are learning in an automatic, the second number matters and the first one does not. Wanstead's 42.1% is your figure, not its 44.4%.
The ordering is the same either way, which is convenient: Wanstead, then Goodmayes, then Chingford, with the same rough spread. So the comparison does not change, but the baseline you are measuring yourself against should.
The gap between the overall and automatic rates at each centre is small and consistent, and it is not evidence that automatic tests are marked differently. They are the same test, on the same routes, marked to the same sheet, with one fewer thing to get wrong.
What Moves Your Odds More Than The Centre Does
In rough order of effect:
- Driving the centre's actual routes, repeatedly, until the junctions stop being surprises
- Fixing observation habits, which account for most of the DVSA's published top ten reasons for failing
- Sitting at least one full rehearsal under test conditions before the real thing
- Booking the test for a time of day you have actually driven in
- Choosing the centre
The fifth item is on the list. It is fifth.
So Which One Should You Book?
If all three are equally reachable and you can practise at all three, book Wanstead. It has the best published rate, and there is no reason to give away four points for nothing.
That is almost never the situation. In practice one centre is obviously closer, its routes are the ones your lessons already cover, and its slots come up sooner. In that case book that one, and spend the energy you would have spent optimising the choice on driving the routes instead.
The exception is worth stating plainly: if you know that hill starts are the weakest thing you do, and you have a genuine choice, Chingford is not the place to find out whether you have fixed it. That is not about the pass rate. It is about the specific roads, and the detail is on the Chingford test centre page.
One Thing That Has Changed
Anyone comparing East London centres from an older source may still see Tanner Street in Barking listed. It closed on 3 January 2026, and candidates who would have tested there now sit at one of the three above. If you are working from a list that includes it, the list is out of date.
Waiting times are the other thing that shifts the decision in practice, sometimes more than any of this does, and they are covered in driving test waiting times in London. The whole process, in order, is in the guide to learning to drive in East London.
The single most reliable way to find out whether you are ready for a particular centre is to sit a full rehearsal on its routes, marked the way an examiner marks it. A mock test costs £50 and is the cheapest £50 in the process.
Book a mock testQuestions about pass rates and centres
Which East London test centre has the highest pass rate?
Wanstead, at 44.4% overall and 42.1% in automatic cars, on DVSA figures for April 2025 to March 2026. Goodmayes is close behind at 43.7% and 41.5%, and Chingford is lowest at 39.9% and 38.3%.
Is Chingford harder than Wanstead?
On the published numbers, yes, by about four and a half percentage points. The usual explanation is the gradients: Chingford routes run over Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill, and hill starts generate rolling-back faults that flatter routes never produce. Whether it is harder for you depends on what you are weak at.
Can I book a test at any centre I want?
Yes. You choose the centre yourself when you book on gov.uk, and you are not restricted to your nearest one. Whether you should is a separate question, since a centre you cannot practise at costs you more than a slightly better pass rate gains you.
Why are the automatic pass rates lower than the overall rates?
They sit a point or two lower at all three centres, and the same gap shows up nationally. It is not a difference in how the test is marked. The test, the routes and the marking sheet are identical.
Does a higher pass rate mean the examiners are more lenient?
No. Examiners are trained and monitored to a national standard. Differences between centres come from the routes themselves, the mix of candidates who test there, and how many decisions per mile the local roads demand.
Should I travel to a centre outside East London for a better pass rate?
Rarely worth it. You trade a few percentage points of published rate for roads you have never driven and a journey on the morning of the test. Route familiarity is worth more than the gap between the best and worst centre here.
If you cannot tell from the inside whether you are at test standard, a marked mock test on the routes of the centre you have booked will tell you in thirty-five minutes.
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Published 1 September 2026. Prices and DVSA figures are checked when this page is revised. If anything here has changed, ring us and we will confirm it.