Applications during the strike period

[Grantham Traveller]

The interesting details from your timeline, DragonNinja, show that documents at HMPOs are also being worked through during the evening to be recorded as ‘received’ against individual applications, and passports are being approved even early in the morning on a weekend day, despite it being a bank holiday weekend. Along with clear evidence of passports being printed in the middle of the night (my wife’s was printed after midnight last Saturday), this points to procedures carrying on at all hours. I wonder if that’s normal or part of the contingency plans for the strike weeks?

However, it ain’t arrived until it’s arrived so nothing is guaranteed until then. Bear in mind it could be delivered by DHL (as my wife’s was) or TNT and that you may well not get any tracking information beforehand. You might, but we didn’t.

[DragonNinja]

We’re not planning to go away until June, so should be pretty safe now, provided they don’t get lost! If it was the full 10 weeks it would have been a different story.

[Grantham Traveller]

If anyone’s interested, as well as my wife’s (13 days Hemel Hempstead) we have three other family member passport renewals in the last fortnight:

1. Bootle, adult renewal 12 days from initial application, new one delivered 5 April, a week after the old passport was delivered to HMPO.
2. Bootle, child renewal, applied the same day, printed on 8 April, now en route.
3. Bootle, adult renewal but requiring maiden to married name changed, applied the same day as 1. and 2., email to say it was being printed 8 April. The human intervention to check marriage certificate seems to have had an impact of only about 4 days.

Both 2. and 3. should be delivered by 12 April, exactly 14 days after all three applications’ old passports were delivered to HMPO Bootle.

The Independent has a story though that the 10-week rule is going to stay, clearly so HMPO can cover its back: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/passport-office-10-week-rule-b2316573.html

Here’s an extract if you can’t access that:
Today, three in 1,000 applications take longer than 10 weeks. And, according to Matthew Rycroft – permanent secretary at the Home Office – there are no plans for reducing the target time to its pre-Covid level.
“We have actually decided to keep it at 10 weeks,” he told MPs. “We know that it will be spiky and there will be times when it will take the full 10 weeks.
“We are going to keep the 10 weeks, because we know we will need that flexibility at some point during the year.”

Interestingly the same story refers to people unofficially holding two or more UK passports. Apparently, short of manually checking against names, HMPO has no way of checking if people have two passports. Certainly sounds like a way round the renewal problem – but I’m amazed it happens.

[DragonNinja]

Update on my application history:

DHL first text 10:01am on 12 April 2023
Sign your passport email 08:14am on 12 April 2023
Passport printed 9:10pm on 11 April 2023
Application approved 7:47am on 8 April 2023
Documents received 8:25pm on 31 March 2023
Application received 10:54am on 29 March 2023
Application submitted 10:53am on 29 March 2023

[Exchange23]

I am really concerned. I originally applied for my first adult passport months ago, but due to confusion on my part it was eventually withdrawn. I called yesterday and they told me to I had to resubmit my application, but to just send my full birth certificate with a cover letter explaining that they have the rest of the documents. When I originally submitted my application it took over three weeks for them to even acknowledge they received these documents. I am supposed to be giving my exchange host university in Hong Kong my passport details by the 15th of May, and I feel like I’m never going to be able to hit this deadline if it’s as slow as last time, with these strikes on top of that. They ask me to send the documents to an office in London, and from what I’ve read here this is going to be one that will be very slow to process anything. As it’s a first adult passport I can’t speed up the application. I have no idea what to do.

[Saracen]

I am still stuck at this for an overseas renewal:

Documents received 24 March 2023
Application received 19 March 2023
Application submitted 19 March 2023

I called the helpline a few days ago and a very helpful lady said she’d put a note on the application.

Called again today and was answered by someone who sounded half asleep (remote work from bed?). They said the examiner had not even looked at the note from some days back. So it really does seem like my file was assigned to an examiner just before the strike and they then disappeared. Am I really now stuck waiting till May? There has got to be a way to make sure this isn’t the case!

Is there a reason overseas applications should take any longer than local ones to examine?

[DragonNinja]

Final update on my application history:

2 adult & 1 child renewal arrived on 13 April 2023
DHL first text 10:01am on 12 April 2023
Sign your passport email 08:14am on 12 April 2023
Passport printed 9:10pm on 11 April 2023
Application approved 7:47am on 8 April 2023
Documents received 8:25pm on 31 March 2023
Application received 10:54am on 29 March 2023
Application submitted 10:53am on 29 March 2023

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