• April 26, 2022

Check expiry of passport and renew immediately if you are travelling: Passport Office faces huge backlogs

Check expiry of passport and renew immediately if you are travelling: Passport Office faces huge backlogs

LONDON April 25: The Home Office is urging everyone to check the expiry date on the passport and apply for a renewal immediately. The Passport Office faces huge backlogs with services branded “an absolute shambles”.

Home Office minister Kevin Foster while addressing MPs acknowledged the situation in regards to huge backlogs with the Passport Office.

He told the MPs that the Passport Office had no intention of letting the 10-week processing time slide further.

It came as SNP home affairs spokesman Stuart C McDonald asked: “All our constituents are having to cancel holidays, miss funerals, rearrange visits, with even a new 10-week target routinely being failed. What will be done to avoid this predictable mess getting worse? And can we be assured that the 10-week target will not be lengthened further as we approach the summer?”

Mr Foster replied: “First in terms of – I go back to the fact that we issued, we dealt with, a million passport applications last month alone. To put that into context, we usually deal with seven million in a whole year. I would point out that where people have compelling and compassionate circumstances such as a funeral, applications can be expedited and it has now been for some time we have been advising to allow for up to 10 weeks for an application to be processed, and last year sent 4.7 million texts reminding people whose passports have expired to renew them.”

He added: “But no, we don’t have any intention to further extend that standard. We are at the moment processing most passports well within it, but we would advise people this is a very, virtually unprecedented surge in demand, and if people are planning to travel this summer we would advise them to get their application in as soon as possible.”

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