Driving School in Collier Row

Driving lessons in Collier Row (RM5) start at £37/hr automatic (10 hours £350), taught by DVSA-approved instructors and rehearsed on the Goodmayes test routes, about 13–21 minutes' drive from Collier Row. Five services run across Collier Row: automatic lessons, beginner, refresher and intensive courses, and mock tests, with prestige and motorway lessons booked through the main pages. The local skill that takes the most practice is the Collier Row Roundabout, where Collier Row Lane, Collier Row Road, Clockhouse Lane and Chase Cross Road all feed one compact circle, and the narrow parked-both-sides run east along Chase Cross Road. Pick-up is free anywhere in RM5, lessons run 7am to 10pm every day, and payment is by cash or bank transfer.

From your first lesson to test day, Wharf Driving School is your driving school in Collier Row. We cover all of RM5, backed by over 20 years teaching across East London.

Why Learn to Drive in Collier Row?

Few parts of East London stretch your all-round driving like Collier Row. You'll get to know roads like the B174 Collier Row Lane and Collier Row Road and build confidence around the Collier Row Roundabout where four roads meet and the Tesco superstore on Collier Row Lane, guided by instructors who teach here every week. Day to day that means the Collier Row Roundabout, where Collier Row Lane, Collier Row Road, Clockhouse Lane and Chase Cross Road all feed one compact circle, and the narrow parked-both-sides run east along Chase Cross Road: exactly the kind of driving examiners want to see.

Our Driving Lessons & Courses in Collier Row

Choose the service that fits you. Every option below is available right across Collier Row:

Where to Start in Collier Row

Start from what the roundabout demands. A beginner course fits RM5 well, because the streets behind Collier Row Library give you somewhere to be slow, but treat the ten-hour block as a start rather than a whole course: between the four-arm roundabout and the hill starts on Havering Road, most people from scratch need three times that. Automatic tuition matches the driving that actually happens here, which is short stop-start runs to the Tesco on Collier Row Lane and down to Romford, with a slope attached to half of them; an Collier Row automatic lessons at £37 an hour car takes the hill out of the problem. Refresher hours are worth more than average, because plenty of licence holders detour along Clockhouse Lane rather than choose a gap at five o'clock. An intensive suits somebody with hours already behind them rather than a complete beginner: a fortnight in RM5 is long enough to learn one roundabout properly and well short of what it takes to learn to drive. A mock test at £50 belongs after the roundabout is routine.

Progress here is uneven in a specific way. The estate grid is generous, so the early hours go quickly and manoeuvres tend to settle within ten. Then two things take the middle of the course. The roundabout needs repeating at different hours, because it is a different junction at nine, at two, and at five when the Chase Cross Road exit backs up onto the circle. The hills need genuine control: Havering Road and Orange Tree Hill mean stopping on a slope, holding on a slope and moving off behind somebody else who is also on one, which is not a thing you can be told once. Reckon on thirty-five to forty-five hours over four or five months at one a week. The last phase is the run south to the A12 towards Goodmayes, which is different driving again: dual carriageway, higher speeds, lane choices made early.

The honest figure here sits above our east London average, and the roundabout is why. Hours are £37, or £350 for ten, and forty is a fair expectation from a standing start, because the four-arm roundabout and the hill starts both need repeating at different times of day rather than covering once. Travel is modest, thirteen to twenty-one minutes to the test centre, and most of that is useful A12 driving rather than dead time. Refresher hours are £41, and three or four of them fix the roundabout for an existing licence holder. A mock test is £50 including the debrief.

The Collier Row Picture

Almost everything in RM5 arranges itself around one compact circle. The Collier Row Roundabout takes Collier Row Lane, Collier Row Road, Clockhouse Lane and Chase Cross Road on four short arms, and no route through the area avoids it, so you meet it in your first two or three hours rather than saving it for the end of the course. The 1930s streets behind the library, Melville Road and the grid around Gelsthorpe Road and Riversdale Road, are where the slow work happens. Then the ground rises, and Havering Road climbs away towards Bedfords Park.

Manoeuvres go on Melville Road and the streets around Gelsthorpe Road and Riversdale Road. Then the roundabout, entered from the quietest arm and repeated until you stop stopping on the circle. Collier Row Lane south past the Tesco entrance comes next, since turning traffic crosses you there constantly, and Chase Cross Road after it for the parked-both-sides squeeze. Hill starts on Havering Road and Orange Tree Hill follow, then the run south to the A12 and the Goodmayes routes.

The pay-and-display bays outside the shops on Collier Row Lane and Collier Row Road run from half eight to half six with a three-hour maximum, and the Tesco and Aldi entrances sit right alongside them, so somebody is always reversing out while somebody else turns in. People here time their shop around it. It also means the busiest hundred yards in Collier Row is the hundred yards nearest the roundabout.

Pick-Up & Getting Around Collier Row

Collier Row is well connected by bus routes 103, 175, 247, 252, 294, 365 and 375, but there's no substitute for being able to drive yourself. We pick up right across RM5 (from Romford two miles south on the Elizabeth and Liberty lines, with Hainault and Newbury Park on the Central line to the west and the residential streets around them) at a time that fits work, college or family. If your week takes you into Hainault and Chadwell Heath, we can pick up there instead; it's all the same coverage area to us.

From Collier Row to the Goodmayes Test Route

We build outward from Collier Row. One of our regular local routes runs like this: west out of the Collier Row Roundabout along Collier Row Road, left down White Hart Lane, left again along Mawney Road and back north up Collier Row Lane to the roundabout. From there the drive extends toward Goodmayes and the examiner's roads.

Beyond your own streets it looks like this: routes head out along Goodmayes Road and Green Lane into Seven Kings, taking in Barley Lane and South Park Drive, with manoeuvres on the parked-up residential streets nearby.

On the way there we keep working on the fault Collier Row's own roads produce most (hesitating on the Collier Row Roundabout and stopping on the circle itself when the Chase Cross Road exit queues back), because the examiner will see it too. Near the centre, the recurring catch is letting observation lapse between the closely spaced Seven Kings junctions.

Why Collier Row Learners Lose Marks

Locally, the recurring problem is hesitating on the Collier Row Roundabout and stopping on the circle itself when the Chase Cross Road exit queues back. Which follows, really, from the Collier Row Roundabout, where Collier Row Lane, Collier Row Road, Clockhouse Lane and Chase Cross Road all feed one compact circle, and the narrow parked-both-sides run east along Chase Cross Road. The classic Goodmayes catch is box-junction violations on the A118 High Road and Seven Kings junction, and drifting into timed bus lanes, and it's one we target relentlessly. The parked-up residential streets around the centre make reversing accuracy a bigger deal at Goodmayes than at most centres.

Slow-speed work happens on the calmest roads we can find in Collier Row; the full Goodmayes route follows once it is solid.

Test Day: Where Collier Row Pupils Go

Most Collier Row learners take their practical test at the Goodmayes test centre, 98 Goodmayes Road, Ilford. The routes lean heavily on the A12 and the A13, and we spend as long as it takes on the King George Avenue Roundabout and the Seven Kings junction beforehand. It has a pass rate 43.7% overall and 41.5% in automatic cars, so thorough preparation really pays off. Wanstead is the other centre Collier Row pupils get booked at, and it's one we know just as well.

There's no magic number of lessons; it depends on your starting point and how much you practise. We'll give you an honest estimate after your first session in Collier Row and update it as you go.

Getting to Know Collier Row Behind the Wheel

There is a lot packed into Collier Row: a 1930s estate suburb north of Romford built around a single busy four-arm roundabout, with lanes climbing into open country behind it. That comes down to the Collier Row Roundabout, where Collier Row Lane, Collier Row Road, Clockhouse Lane and Chase Cross Road all feed one compact circle, and the narrow parked-both-sides run east along Chase Cross Road.

We work the B1459 Chase Cross Road and the B175 Havering Road regularly, and use the streets near Bedfords Park and its red deer herd up Lower Bedfords Road and the Collier Row Roundabout where four roads meet when something needs repeating quietly. Havering has consulted on a collision-reduction scheme for the Collier Row Roundabout itself, which tells you how often that junction catches drivers out.

Reading Collier Row as a Whole

Four roads, one circle, and everything else hangs off it. Collier Row Lane runs south towards Romford, Collier Row Road west, Clockhouse Lane north and Chase Cross Road east, and they all arrive at the same compact roundabout at the same moment. The shopping sits on the two arms nearest it, with the Tesco and Aldi entrances putting turning traffic straight across both. Follow Chase Cross Road to its far end and it hands you to Havering Road, where the ground rises in earnest: Havering Road becomes Orange Tree Hill and climbs towards Havering-atte-Bower, with Lower Bedfords Road turning off up to Bedfords Park and its deer herd, and the further out you go the more the road behaves like open country. Behind the shops the 1930s grid of Melville Road, Gelsthorpe Road and Riversdale Road is regular, level and slow, and it connects back to the two main arms and nowhere else. The awkward part is the near end of that same Chase Cross Road, narrow with cars parked both sides, because when it queues the tail reaches the roundabout itself. South towards Romford and the A12 is the easy way out and the busiest.

Collier Row runs on Romford's timetable more than its own. From half seven the roundabout fills with traffic heading south down Collier Row Lane towards Romford and the A12, and it does the same in reverse from four until about half six, when the Chase Cross Road exit is the one that queues back. The shop bays on Collier Row Lane and Collier Row Road are chargeable until half six with a three-hour limit, so the parade churns steadily all day rather than peaking. Saturday around the Tesco entrance is heavier than any weekday lunchtime. Mid-morning and early afternoon in term time are the best hours for anything new; the best hours for roundabout practice are exactly the ones everyone else avoids, and one deliberate evening lesson is worth three quiet ones.

There is more usable practice ground here than in most of the areas we cover, and it is all in one place. The 1930s streets behind the library, Melville Road, Gelsthorpe Road and Riversdale Road, are wide, level and unrestricted, which makes them the obvious spot for reversing, turning and parking. What they cannot give you is a slope, and the slope is the local skill. For that you want Havering Road or Orange Tree Hill, and neither is a place to sit and repeat something with a queue behind you. Chase Cross Road is not practice ground at all. Private practice is realistic in RM5. Off the shopping frontage the parking is residential and unrestricted, so a household car generally has somewhere of its own to sit overnight. Use it on hill starts with someone experienced, and leave the roundabout for lessons.

Seven bus routes converge on this one junction, and they change what it asks of you. The 103 runs up to its stand at Chase Cross, the 247 heads west out of the circle towards Marks Gate and Hainault, and the 294 and 375 come through on their way to and from Romford, so there is a bus somewhere on the roundabout at most hours of the day. That matters because a bus on the circle takes away the sightline you need. You cannot see what is coming off Clockhouse Lane past the side of one, and both instinctive answers are wrong: sitting still until it has cleared is how the tail behind you starts, and moving on the assumption that nothing is following it is worse. Wait for the sightline, not for the bus. The same routes then squeeze east along Chase Cross Road, where parking on both kerbs leaves one usable lane and priority goes to whoever commits first. It is easy to nose into a gap you cannot finish and end up reversing with a bus waiting behind you.

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Reviewed and updated August 2026 by the Wharf Driving School team.