I now have my child renewal back from Durham:
Application submitted 05/09/2021
Documents received 11/09/2021
Approved 01/10/2021
Delivered 06/10/2021
Thing I have learnt from obsessive Twitter stalking which might help:
1. Passports are approved roughly in order of when the tracker says your docs are received (not necessarily when actually received)
2. If you call and ask they will note your travel date on the application, then the examiner might be kind enough to speed it through to the printing stage. Use these phone numbers to cut out the recorded messages and not be put in the queue for a call back 01633 285422 / 0300 123 1973.
3. Often the tracker goes straight from docs received to approved with no in between stage, these are generally processed on the new system and is currently averaging 21 day from docs received to approved
4. If you have an extra step on the tracker ‘application processing’ these seem to take about a week longer to approve and apparently are on the old system.
5. If you are really cutting it fine you can rearrange the TNT delivery once it appears on the tracker to a day earlier, I didn’t need to do this but have seen others doing this successfully.
6. I found this website and also the twitter account for passport waiting and HMPO really useful as in the comments you can guage which date of documents received the different offices are up to. I was able to predict the day mine would be approved and was correct!
Good luck everyone 🙂