Editorial policy & sources

Who we are

PassNav is an independent service that hires out TomTom sat-navs pre-loaded with practice routes for UK driving test centres. We publish these guides because learners and parents kept asking us the same questions, and the answers are spread across many official pages. The guides are free and you don't need to hire anything to use them.

Where our information comes from

• Official guidance — GOV.UK pages published by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA, which runs driving tests) and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA, which issues licences), DVSA's Ready to Pass campaign site, and the guidance DVSA publishes for its examiners.
• Official statistics — DVSA's published driving test data tables. We keep a dated copy of each file we use, with its original download link and a checksum, so every figure can be traced back to the exact table it came from.
• Our practical tips — shown in boxes labelled "Practical tip · PassNav guidance, not official DVSA advice". They're general suggestions for practice, not rules.

We don't use other learner-driver websites, forums or AI chat answers as a source for any official fact.

How we check it

• Each guide shows when it was last updated and when it was last checked against its sources.
• Time-sensitive details (fees, booking rules, dates when a change takes effect) show the official page's own "last updated" date in the Sources list.
• Each guide has a review date. Our build process flags any guide that has passed it, so it gets re-checked rather than quietly going stale.
• Statistics are processed by a script that checks totals and percentages against the published table. We don't fill in missing years or estimate figures DVSA hasn't published.

How we use AI

We use AI tools to help research, draft, summarise and build charts. AI is not treated as a source: every consequential fact, figure and rule is checked against the official page or table cited, and a person reviews the guide before it goes live.

Some of our videos use AI-generated, dramatised scenes. They are labelled as such wherever they appear, and any figures in our data videos come from the same published tables as our data pages.

Reading our data pages

• Pass rates and waiting times are published historical statistics. They aren't live test availability and can't predict an individual result.
• A test centre's pass rate reflects who tests there (age, experience, first attempt or not) as well as its roads. A higher rate doesn't mean an easier test, and we don't rank centres as "easiest" or "hardest".
• Where we show a ranking — for example an animated ranking video — it ranks the published pass rate only, includes only centres above a stated minimum number of tests in each year, and never fills in missing years.
• Centres with few tests can swing a lot from year to year; we always show the number of tests next to a rate.

What we won't do

• Claim to know or publish "official test routes" — DVSA doesn't publish them, and examiners can vary routes.
• Promise or imply that anything guarantees a pass.
• Point you to cancellation finders, resellers or anyone who books tests on your behalf. Since 12 May 2026 it has been against the law for anyone other than the learner to book a car driving test — including booking services, cancellation finders and driving instructors. Book, change or cancel your test yourself on the official GOV.UK service.
• Publish made-up reviews, ratings or testimonials.

Corrections

If you think something is wrong or out of date, email passnav@smartaisolution.co.uk with the page link. We'll check it against the official source and correct the page, updating its date, if it needs changing.

Licence

GOV.UK content and DVSA statistics are Crown copyright and used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Charts and analysis are PassNav's own work based on that data.

See also: Information about the driving test (website notice).