DRIVING LESSONS IN BARKING & DAGENHAM

Manual and automatic driving lessons in Barking and Dagenham (IG11, RM9 & RM10) 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, Goodmayes Driving Test Centre (98 Goodmayes Road, Ilford, Redbridge, IG3 9UZ) recorded a 43.7% overall pass rate across 21,374 tests, compared with the 51.2% Great Britain average. Manual candidates achieved 46.2%, automatic candidates achieved 41.5%, and first-attempt candidates achieved 44.5%.

The nearest active official DVSA / Pearson VUE car theory test centre for Barking and Dagenham (IG11, RM9 & RM10) learners is Ilford Theory Test Centre at 253-257 High Road, Ilford, London, IG1 1NE (3.5 miles via A12/A123). 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.

No. The centre at 84 Tanner Street closed on 3 January 2026, and DVSA moved its booked tests to Goodmayes and Wanstead without cancelling any. DVSA's reason was the roads: it had lost the nearby car parks used for the bay and forward parking exercises, and traffic around the centre no longer let an examiner see a candidate drive at higher speeds. A website that still lists it is out of date, so check the centre named on your GOV.UK booking before test day.

Ask your instructor, because the published figures are close: Wanstead 44.4% and Goodmayes 43.7% in the 2025/26 DVSA release. Goodmayes is nearer for most of the borough but conducts over twenty-one thousand tests a year, so its dates go quickly. Wanstead is further, and worth checking whenever Goodmayes is full.

Instructor costs are lower this far east, where parking, congestion and time lost in traffic eat less of the working day than in a central borough. The saving goes into the rate, which is why IG11, RM9 and RM10 are £35 an hour.

Yes, at the same price as manual. It is the majority choice at Goodmayes, where more than half of all tests are conducted in automatics. Goodmayes test centre passed 41.5% of 11,560 automatic tests in the DVSA 2025/26 figures, against 46.2% for manual. One instructor page offers automatic lessons and says it mostly covers Barking and Dagenham. That instructor is Md Sahad. Instructors who offer automatic lessons and state they cover Barking and Dagenham also include Nabeel Shah, Marklange Perera, Shohidul Islam, Rishna Parves and Shelina Nessa. Say automatic when you book.

No. Rated Driving is an agent rather than a school, so the instructor who teaches you is a local independent working IG and RM postcodes, not an employee sent from a depot. We hold your payment until after each lesson, then pass it on. Every instructor is DVSA-licensed and DBS-checked, and you can ask for a female instructor.

Barking, Dagenham, Becontree, Chadwell Heath, Rush Green, Creekmouth, Marks Gate, Beam Park, Castle Green and Thames View among others. 6 of the borough's 7 postcode districts are shared with a neighbouring borough, so enter your postcode and we check who covers your exact street.

Yes. Say nervous when you book and we match you with a patient instructor. Becontree is one of the better places in east London to start, because its residential grid is quiet and big enough to spend several hours in before you go anywhere near the A13.