I travel on Thursday and received an email at 8.30am this morning with a direct number to the agent dealing with my application. I think I got an email as I was on hold to the General enquiries team. The person I spoke to on the general line advised me that he was 100% certain I wouldn’t be getting my passport in time. In the end I had to hang up as everything he was saying was at odds with what I’d been advised previously.
The main issue at play seems to be that people are getting told different things by different call handlers. The guy from the Durham office told me that in the morning the team has a work list of people travelling within 48 hours and that so far in almost every case people have been getting their passports.