Space Hopper
Winger
Passport staff are fantastic.
You've got to hand it to them!
You've got to hand it to them!
Passport Office - Inefficient Public Sector
- Thread starter mickb2112
- Start date
Twisted
Striker
Aye you're not allowed to wear hats in your passport thats right.
Provider
Striker
Was exactly the same for me when I got my new one earlier this year. Great service.
GordonMuchallNo1Fan
Striker
Renewed my passport a couple of year ago, all done very quickly. Couldn't fault it
Rick O Shea
Striker
Yeah - my son renewed his driving licence recently - got the new one back in less than a week.
ivanthereasonable
Striker
As far as thhe DVLA is concerned, renewed my licence about 6 months back and that was pretty quick.
Also had several visits to various department at QE Gateshead for opp, and everything was speedy and without hiccups.
Off topic i know, but it's praise where its due.
Also had several visits to various department at QE Gateshead for opp, and everything was speedy and without hiccups.
Off topic i know, but it's praise where its due.
tynevalleyblackcat
Striker
Mine is a nice deep Green now. Take that leavers!
Takes the Irish 20 working days to process a new international one. I assume the extra time is needed to add the freedom of movement that comes with it
Pnematic1
Full Back
Yeah, but there’s a 10 month waiting list at the Dublin pregnancy testing clinic……..
on a related note, if you go in person with an appointment do you get it there and then?
some in laws are due to go away next week and their daughter has destroyed theirs so they can't go. they've made an appointment to try to get new ones early next week.
some in laws are due to go away next week and their daughter has destroyed theirs so they can't go. they've made an appointment to try to get new ones early next week.
Fletch73
Midfield
A decent read about it last month:
Passports in just five days — how a broken system was fixed
I brace myself for carnage as I enter the doors of Peterborough’s passport office. Will there be staff sobbing in the stairwell? Mounds of forgotten applications piled up in dusty corners? Furious holidaymakers headbutting walls in frustration at endless delays?
This is the national headquarters of His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO). And the passport system, as you have surely read, is in meltdown. Headlines about passport chaos have dominated the papers over the past year. In 2022, with Covid-era backlogs, about 360,000 passports took more than ten weeks to be processed (to compare, 99.9 per cent of applications in 2018 were processed within a month). Expensive holidays were cancelled at the last minute, gap years were delayed and business trips disrupted.
Yet in the Peterborough office, a swish, glass-fronted new building close to the River Nene, I find an oasis of tranquillity. Staff tap away efficiently in open-plan office space — completely paperless. Downstairs at the counter, there are only a handful of people waiting for appointments, next to a picture-postcard mural of Venice.
What’s going on? Where’s my crisis? The truth is the passport system is working again. Many things are broken. You might not be able to get a GP appointment or a driving test this side of 2030, but if you want a passport quickly replaced or renewed for your summer holiday, you’re in luck.
Strikes continue to plague the country, including one by passport office staff for five weeks over Easter, but the organisation’s turnaround is a rare contemporary British success story. HMPO is processing 99.4 per cent of passports within the advertised ten weeks.How did they manage it? And what can they teach the rest of us?
By last year, things had reached a pretty bleak point for the passport office. Brexit created a confusing regulatory divergence between British and EU passports, then Covid arrived, bringing chaos. “We had a really good system prior to Covid,” Abi Tierney, the director-general of HMPO and UK Visas and Immigration, says with a sigh. “You could predict almost on a weekly basis exactly what your demand was going to be, based on how many passports were expiring, how many people were being born, when the expiry dates were. It was a really good planning system.”
During Covid, applications dropped off a cliff. In 2020-21 the passport office processed five million fewer applications than usual.
It was when the pandemic receded that the trouble began. HMPO expected an increase in demand post-Covid, but they didn’t anticipate the surge caused by panicked holidaymakers and frenzied press coverage.
In about February last year, before the Easter holidays, the office was deluged with a wave of applications. “People started to panic, especially leading into the summer holidays,” Tierney says. That drove thousands of visits to the passport website — which crashed — and a deluge of calls to the contact centre. The sense of panic was then amplified by Boris Johnson helpfully threatening to “privatise the arse” out of HMPO if it didn’t get back on track.
Customers were wary of applying online and putting their passports in the post but in fact the digital operation was running more smoothly than the overwhelmed counter service.
For a paper application, a customer has to go to the Post Office for a form and fill it out — with plenty of room for error — then send it to an office with a photo and a fee. Digitally, however, customers take a photo at home against a white background, fill in a form and pay online. Their application joins a national queue which is much faster, sometimes taking as little as two days to be approved.
After the forms have been approved, the passport is printed at one of two national print centres (at undisclosed locations). This can take a couple of days, before they’re sent back to the applicant via Fedex and DHL.
This digital journey is so streamlined that people have reported applying for a passport on a Monday and receiving it on Friday — about the same time it takes England to lose a Test match to Australia.
Other measures introduced by HMPO during the pandemic include voice-recognition call lines, allowing people to check on the status of their passport application at every stage of the process. They could also track their progress online and receive text updates, a welcome change from the bureaucratic silence that used to emanate from HMPO. Text messages are also sent to customers whose passports are nearing expiration.
The system is flying. Between January and May HMPO processed 4.5 million passports — more than in the same period last year. Almost all were completed on time — despite the fact that 20 per cent used snail mail, and that strikes hit the workforce for five weeks earlier this year.
There are new challenges too, such as the war in Ukraine and the Taliban-induced exodus from Afghanistan. “It would be nice to have a normal year for a change,” Tierney says. Then after that, dare I say it, a holiday?
Passports in just five days — how a broken system was fixed
I brace myself for carnage as I enter the doors of Peterborough’s passport office. Will there be staff sobbing in the stairwell? Mounds of forgotten applications piled up in dusty corners? Furious holidaymakers headbutting walls in frustration at endless delays?
This is the national headquarters of His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO). And the passport system, as you have surely read, is in meltdown. Headlines about passport chaos have dominated the papers over the past year. In 2022, with Covid-era backlogs, about 360,000 passports took more than ten weeks to be processed (to compare, 99.9 per cent of applications in 2018 were processed within a month). Expensive holidays were cancelled at the last minute, gap years were delayed and business trips disrupted.
Yet in the Peterborough office, a swish, glass-fronted new building close to the River Nene, I find an oasis of tranquillity. Staff tap away efficiently in open-plan office space — completely paperless. Downstairs at the counter, there are only a handful of people waiting for appointments, next to a picture-postcard mural of Venice.
What’s going on? Where’s my crisis? The truth is the passport system is working again. Many things are broken. You might not be able to get a GP appointment or a driving test this side of 2030, but if you want a passport quickly replaced or renewed for your summer holiday, you’re in luck.
Strikes continue to plague the country, including one by passport office staff for five weeks over Easter, but the organisation’s turnaround is a rare contemporary British success story. HMPO is processing 99.4 per cent of passports within the advertised ten weeks.How did they manage it? And what can they teach the rest of us?
By last year, things had reached a pretty bleak point for the passport office. Brexit created a confusing regulatory divergence between British and EU passports, then Covid arrived, bringing chaos. “We had a really good system prior to Covid,” Abi Tierney, the director-general of HMPO and UK Visas and Immigration, says with a sigh. “You could predict almost on a weekly basis exactly what your demand was going to be, based on how many passports were expiring, how many people were being born, when the expiry dates were. It was a really good planning system.”
During Covid, applications dropped off a cliff. In 2020-21 the passport office processed five million fewer applications than usual.
It was when the pandemic receded that the trouble began. HMPO expected an increase in demand post-Covid, but they didn’t anticipate the surge caused by panicked holidaymakers and frenzied press coverage.
In about February last year, before the Easter holidays, the office was deluged with a wave of applications. “People started to panic, especially leading into the summer holidays,” Tierney says. That drove thousands of visits to the passport website — which crashed — and a deluge of calls to the contact centre. The sense of panic was then amplified by Boris Johnson helpfully threatening to “privatise the arse” out of HMPO if it didn’t get back on track.
Customers were wary of applying online and putting their passports in the post but in fact the digital operation was running more smoothly than the overwhelmed counter service.
Apply on Monday, receive on Friday
Efficient digitisation has been HMPO’s path to redemption. Passport applications first began going digital in 2016 and were quickly increased during Covid. The operation to digitise passports and driving licences, set up a decade ago, has become a world leader, with the idea exported to countries such as America, Germany and Canada.For a paper application, a customer has to go to the Post Office for a form and fill it out — with plenty of room for error — then send it to an office with a photo and a fee. Digitally, however, customers take a photo at home against a white background, fill in a form and pay online. Their application joins a national queue which is much faster, sometimes taking as little as two days to be approved.
After the forms have been approved, the passport is printed at one of two national print centres (at undisclosed locations). This can take a couple of days, before they’re sent back to the applicant via Fedex and DHL.
This digital journey is so streamlined that people have reported applying for a passport on a Monday and receiving it on Friday — about the same time it takes England to lose a Test match to Australia.
Other measures introduced by HMPO during the pandemic include voice-recognition call lines, allowing people to check on the status of their passport application at every stage of the process. They could also track their progress online and receive text updates, a welcome change from the bureaucratic silence that used to emanate from HMPO. Text messages are also sent to customers whose passports are nearing expiration.
The system is flying. Between January and May HMPO processed 4.5 million passports — more than in the same period last year. Almost all were completed on time — despite the fact that 20 per cent used snail mail, and that strikes hit the workforce for five weeks earlier this year.
There are new challenges too, such as the war in Ukraine and the Taliban-induced exodus from Afghanistan. “It would be nice to have a normal year for a change,” Tierney says. Then after that, dare I say it, a holiday?
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Some Random Guy
Striker
Similar for me last renewal. @ShieldsBlackCat2015 insisted I was a liar for reasons I don't think I'll ever understand.
Paddy O'Dors
Striker
Sent a parcel 1st class signed for on Monday via RM. It still hasn't been delivered. Service has gone to rat shit since it was privatised.
ShieldsBlackCat2015
Striker
And you still to this day have had that locked away in your memory?
How sad is that!
I can’t be arsed for remember what I did yesterday! Frankly I don’t see the point in remembering shit.
Dan..Dan..Dan..Dan
Winger
A 'glass half full' person would have titled the thread, 'Overstaffed Government department sit playing on their phones all day'
Fletch
Striker
Did you just take your own photo on phone ? Need to sort mine out
Big Jeff
Winger
I agree but I burnt my forearm on a pan today, I’m going to remember that as the scar will testify.And you still to this day have had that locked away in your memory?
How sad is that!
I can’t be arsed for remember what I did yesterday! Frankly I don’t see the point in remembering shit.
journeyman
Midfield
Nothing wrong with DVLA, found them very quick for the personnel things I’ve needed
Jasper
Striker
That's kind of happening in some respects. A lot of departments and non execs are looking to them as the standard.
