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Mine was sent to Peterborough too and I’m about three weeks behind you with dates of documents being received, except that there was then an 8 working-day lag between my passport being received (29 Aoril) and it entering the processing queue (12 May). It is just possible that since yours involves a name change there may be a need for some sort of additional verification during the processing; but you’d have thought the marriage certificate would be sufficient.
I sympathize with your frustration. It is a black hole about which none of us can do anything. I am pretty sure they do have a better idea of processing times at present but have been instructed to give a blanket answer to anyone calling or contacting them in order to prevent any applicant trying to place pressure on their staff. It’s worth bearing in mind that the person you speak to can be attached to any one of the UK passport offices and won’t have any local knowledge about the office your application is at.
Clazsmiff: to which Passport Office did you mail your application?
There’s nothing to stop you ringing the Passport Adviceline (0300 000 2222). You will be put through to a human being and then you can explain your problem. They may not be able to offer much assistance but on the other hand you may get a hint of whether there are any signs of normality beginning to resume.
rob’s application (above) took about 35 working days from the day his application entered the processing queue (taking into account the various bank holidays that have happened). On that basis you might hope yours would reach the same point on 29 May. But who knows?
I have learned from some newspaper articles that some passport staff were reallocated to processing universal credit applications in April. I have no idea whether that is still happening and/or whether those involve staff who are working from home.
Lukek21: It’s a simple answer too. The UK Passport office website says with regard to first adult passports that:
‘Passport interview services are temporarily unavailable because of coronavirus (COVID-19). If you need an interview, your application will be put on hold. If you need a passport urgently, for compassionate reasons (for example if a family member has died) or for government business, phone the Passport Adviceline.’
https://www.gov.uk/apply-first-adult-passport/after-you-applyIt also only says you ‘may’ be asked to attend an interview, but I think that it’s normal to be called in for a first adult passport. If they intend to ask you for an interview then your application will have been suspended until interview services are restored – whenever that is – unless they decide to bypass the interview requirement if it’s possible to verify identity another way.
What this means is that on the whole the only passport applications that can be processed currently are those that do not require interviews, or which do not require more complex checking. In practice therefore only standard renewals are going to be easily processed by reduced staff in the passport offices.
It’s worth bearing mind that only a few people are posting on this forum. Reading through the posts it’s clear that almost all the applications discussed here are of different types sent to different passport offices. There must be thousands, of other passport applications in the system at the moment about which we know nothing. Therefore there are few general conclusions that can be drawn about what is actually going on in the various passport offices. What we can say is that most applications are taking longer for one reason or another and some will have been suspended. We can also say that since passports cannot be processed by passport office staff working at home this is a service that will fall into the category of job where staff need to return to work. One can only hope that that is starting to happen. However, interview services will require more complex arrangements in order to meet government guidelines about workplace practices. There must also be something of a backlog now involving uncompleted applications from before the lockdown and others submitted since.
What we’re gradually building up here is a picture that is completely haphazard and it’s been very useful to see this detail. Some people’s applications have been processed extremely quickly, even having only been sent off very recently. Others appear to be taking as much as seven weeks from the point at which ‘application being processed’ started.
This may well be down to the individual passport offices so it would be good to know in all cases which PO is involved. The high-speed Glasgow turn-round is particularly interesting since Scotland is still locked down and therefore the PO ought to be on minimum staffing. I don’t think anyone apart from me has mentioned Peterborough. That’s where mine is. England is supposed to be seeing people returning to work if they cannot work from home – and passport processing cannot take place outside the PO. My documents were received at Peterborough on 29 April, but processing did not start until 12 May (two days ago). That’s a gap of 13 days which of course included the VE Day holiday, so it’s actually 8 working days. None of that surprises me hugely but I am astonished that a couple of ordinary renewals (as mine is) have been received, processed, approved, printed and sent out, all
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within
that period. I might add that I put in a covering letter (which I was told to by the Adviceline) explaining that I need the passport renewed so that we can help extract our son and his family from Vietnam later this year (Vietnam requiring 6 months + validity remaining). My old passport also had a torn page (thank you Bangkok transit people) so I couldn’t use it even if we were able to get to Vietnam sooner. I don’t know if they take any notice of that sort of thing.
It must be the case that the circumstances in each PO are very different. Only a speculative observation but I imagine that the POs must have received far fewer applications after the lockdown commenced in late March, so this might help speed up a return to normal-turnaround rates in the weeks to come.
I have every sympathy with the enormous frustration felt by some of the applicants who have been posting here. One is completely powerless to do anything about a passport application, and you rapidly reach the point where you feel you’d pay anything just to get the wretched thing back and be able to stop worrying about it. I freely admit it is preying on my mind all day, every day and my need is not even especially urgent.
Presumably therefore tfrtraveller, your application has been stuck at ‘application being processed’ since 27 April (15 days ago) and not progressed. It’s hard to know what this means exactly since a standard renewal really ought not to require much processing. I looked back at some pre-lockdown posts, i.e. in normal times, talking about passport applications and the time separating ‘application being processed’ from ‘application approved’ seemed to vary from the same day to over a week.
This thread is worth looking at, particularly the most recent ones:
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g186216-i15-k10568771-o140-UK_British_Passport_renewal_Times-United_Kingdom.htmlI’d like to reiterate that although I am set up for alerts on my application I have NOT received an email (or a text) today to tell me that it had reached ‘being processed’. I only found that out by chance when tracking it today. So it worth looking even if you haven’t heard anything.
shazzalats is clearly having a frustrating experience. The comments she received on the passport office adviceline sound suspiciously like what I had on one call a few weeks ago, indeed almost verbatim, so I wonder it it was the same person. I’ve also spoken to two other people, twice, who took a rather different line and explained that standard renewals are being dealt with, but slowly. I also read this in The Independent newspaper on 22 April:
‘A Home Office spokesperson said: “Her Majesty’s Passport Office is continuing to process standard passport applications, but they are taking longer than usual as a result of changed working practices designed to keep both staff and customers safe.”’
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/passport-renewal-uk-office-home-travel-holiday-expire-a9478731.htmlThe upshot is that the position is not clear but will surely improve as most staff return to work. It’s worth bearing in mind that the people who answer the adviceline are not currently, or at least haven’t been, in the office. These individuals are working from home during the crisis.
justinj’s experience seems almost surreal compared to other people’s in its unnerving speed. What I’d be interested to know is which passport office his application went to.
Mine is at Peterborough and it’s a completely straightforward renewal. Nevertheless, it’s taken 13 days until today (12 May) for the ‘application being processed’ (a rather non-committal and cryptic phrase that gives no indication of how long the next stage will take) notification to appear. Oddly, I have not yet received an email to tell me that. I simply went to the tracking page and saw it there this evening.
If justinj’s application went through Peterborough then this would suggest the whole process is rather haphazard. If on the other hand it’s a different passport office that would indicate different staffing levels and other factors affecting their ability to deal with applications.
DarkMess’s application, being for a first adult passport, will almost certainly require attending an interview in person. These have been suspended for the time being, as the Passport Office states:
“Passport interview services are temporarily unavailable because of coronavirus (COVID-19). If you need an interview, your application will be put on hold. If you need a passport urgently, for compassionate reasons (for example if a family member has died) or for government business, phone the Passport Adviceline.”
The same problem concerns applications from abroad since these require interviews with the Passport Office in the UK held online at a VAC in the country where the application has been filed from. This is why my grandson’s passport application in Vietnam has been suspended. Nothing will happen to DarkMess’s application until interviews have been restored, and there will certainly be now quite a backlog.
Standard adult renewals do not require any of this process and apart from checking the old passport, do not usually require any further verification beyond checking the photograph. The procedure is therefore straightforward and ought to be quick. We still don’t have any information on this site about specific people who have received a standard renewal back recently though I’ve been assured by the Adviceline that these are being processed, albeit slowly. However, this may speed up. Passport officers cannot process applications from home, for obvious reasons, and with the government’s exhortation to such workers (i.e. those who cannot work from home) to return to work, one might hope things will improve (and surely government departments will be among the first to be appropriately modified to allow a safe working environment). Even so I’m not holding my breath and won’t be surprised if even this takes till August or even September. My old passport has been received but the application still hasn’t been checked or processed.
Unfortunately, we are all even more in the dark when it comes to first adult passport applications and any form of application from abroad. Their additional complications mean that the process is likely to be even more delayed. but in all honesty, who knows?
Phone
Passport Adviceline
Telephone: 0300 222 0000
From outside the UK: +44 (0)300 222 0000
Textphone: 18001 0300 222 0222
Monday to Sunday, 9am to 5:30pmSo far, the majority of posts on this page are about people applying for UK passports from abroad which makes it look as if that’s the most serious problem area though there aren’t enough posts yet to get a clear picture. The delays are presumably due in large part to the closure of places like Visa Application Centres abroad. My grandson’s passport application was made in January in Vietnam. My son was about to attend the standard interview at Hanoi’s VAC in early April but of course that was cancelled. The VAC is still closed even though Vietnam is moving away from lockdown. Result, my grandson still has no passport and this crucially prevented the family from being able to rush for a repatriation flight. An ETD could have been obtained but the whole frantic nightmare put them off and they decided to stay on. This is why I need mine renewed so we can get out to help them come home late in the year.
It’s interesting that we’ve heard nothing from UK applicants and renewal applicants on this site who have actually received their passports back during this period. I called up the Passport helpline on Thursday 7 May for an update on the general situation. I was told that standard renewals are being processed very slowly by a ‘skeleton staff’, though that emergency ones can be done in a couple of days. The call-centre person, who was clearly working from home, said she was sure I’d get mine ‘by August’ and assured me mine would be in a queue, not siting in a box somewhere. Since I’m not in a hurry that doesn’t matter. However, I note that although mine was received at Peterborough on 29 April it has not been checked or processed in any way. She told me she wouldn’t expect any progress for 2-3 weeks.
What I’d also like to know is if, say by September the passport still hasn’t come whether I can at that time ring up and book a fast track appointment (assuming that service has been restored by then) by converting the application to that. I intend to find this out next week.
I’m in an odd position. My passport didn’t expire until April 2021 so my situation is not urgent. But we have family stuck abroad and if flying resumes in the autumn we won’t be able to travel to Vietnam (where one of our sons lives) after October because my passport won’t have sufficient validity. We’ve never met our grandson – has a heart condition and they are planning to come back permanently but will need our help to pack up to travel back here with two small children. Now, I could have left the renewal till the autumn but I figured that by then there’ll be a massive backlog. I called up the Passport Office twice. The first member of staff I spoke to told me not to send it in until the autumn and banged on about using the fast track service then. He seemed strangely keen to sell this service, even though it isn’t currently available. Then there was an article about ten days ago in The Independent that quoted a Home Office spokesperson who said standard passport renewals were being processed but that they were taking longer. I called up the Passport Office again and this time another member of staff confirmed exactly that; indeed, he added ‘the bottom line is that you can send it in, but it’ll take longer – though he couldn’t give any information about that. So, I decided to send it in anyway on the basis that I can afford to wait several months. All I know is that I made the application on 28 April and my old passport was received on 29 April. I’ll be interested to see how long it takes. If the lockdown begins to subside as of next week the pace of processing may start to accelerate.
It would also be interesting to hear from someone who has received their passport back in the last two weeks, and how long it took.
