DRIVING LESSONS IN GRAYS

Manual and automatic driving lessons in Grays (RM16, RM17 & RM20) cost the same: £35.00 per hour pay-as-you-go (£70 for a 2-hour starter session). Block bookings reduce the hourly rate to £34.00/hr for 10 hours (£340), £33.45/hr for 20 hours (£669), £33.27/hr for 30 hours (£998), and £33.08/hr for 40 hours (£1,323, saving £77). A £1.99 booking admin fee applies.

According to the official DVSA 2025/26 practical test dataset, Tilbury Driving Test Centre (Russell Road, Tilbury, Essex, RM18 7AE) recorded a 50.4% overall pass rate across 5,083 tests, compared with the 51.2% Great Britain average. Manual candidates achieved 53.5%, automatic candidates achieved 46.0%, and first-attempt candidates achieved 44.8%.

The nearest active official DVSA / Pearson VUE car theory test centre for Grays (RM16, RM17 & RM20) learners is Basildon Theory Test Centre at 1st Floor, Southgate House, Town Square, Basildon, SS14 1BN (6.2 miles via A13 / A127 / c2c). The official GOV.UK car theory test fee is £23.00, and every Rated Driving learner gets free access to our DVSA Theory & Hazard Perception App.

Erith is a little over a point higher, at 51.6% against 50.4%, and it is 5.7 miles further away with the Thames in between. Getting there means the Dartford Crossing, the Dart Charge and a set of roads you will not have practised on. A point of published difference does not buy much against that. Pick the centre whose roads you know.

No. Rated Driving is an agent, and the match goes to an independent instructor already covering your RM postcode. What you pay is held until the lesson has been delivered before it moves on. Licence and DBS checks happen before anyone is offered to a learner, and a female instructor can be asked for.

Little Thurrock, South Stifford, Stifford Clays, North Stifford and Chafford Hundred around the town, then Chadwell St Mary, Orsett Heath, Orsett and Baker Street inland, West Thurrock towards Lakeside, and West Tilbury and East Tilbury along the river. The postcode you enter is checked against who actually covers that street.

It changes from week to week, so read the live figure on GOV.UK when you are ready to book rather than trusting last month's. Whatever the queue is doing, a test may be booked up to 24 weeks ahead and there is no official register of earlier dates. Tilbury serves the whole of this corner of Thurrock from one building, so its slots go quickly. If the slot you were given is unusable, the free Driving Test Swap offers it to learners hunting for exactly that date.

The DVSA's research puts it at about 45 hours of professional lessons and 22 hours of private practice on top. The private hours are the ones people leave out and the ones that show on the day. A town centre with this much stop start traffic tends to add hours early and save them later, and your instructor can give you a real figure once they have seen you drive.

Yes. Say so at the booking stage. The estate roads at Chafford Hundred and Stifford Clays are wide and quiet enough to make a first hour bearable, and nobody needs to take you down Orsett Road until you want to go.

Yes. Book with your postcode and say refresher. Most people here want the hours spent on the A126 at Lakeside pressure, and on parking in a town centre where every space near the station is spoken for before the commuter trains have filled.