By Lucy Caulkett-
The rush for passport renewals is truly underway, following an announcement that passports must be submitted by those who wish to travel on time for the start of the school summer holidays. It’s estimated that 4.5million Brits had their passports expire during the Covid-19 pandemic when travel restrictions put the tourism industry on hold.
The queue for passport renewals has begun , but there is no magic to the speed with which passport renewals can be secured. The cost for a passport renewal ranges from £75 to £85 and applications can be submitted digitally via the Government’s online service, or via a local Post Office.
The service costs more than the regular passport application, with a charge of £122 for a child passport, or £142 for an adult passport.
However, booking appointments have been slow and dreadful. with many holidaymakers losing faith completely in the system. Not even the urgent service has provided much hope for desperate passengers who are eager to fly off to the sunset.
One person wrote: “I’m heading into week 12 and still waiting. No appointments available for fast-track now and phone lines being cut off. What an absolute disgrace of a system.”
Another put: “It’s appalling isn’t it? After two years of Covid restrictions, wouldn’t it have been foreseeable that there would be a surge in passport applications? I’m probably going to miss my honeymoon now.”
Brits have also been warned of the three essential things to check on your passport immediately, to reduce likelihood of a ruined holiday.
There should be no damage or missing pages to the passport.
It must also be no more than ten years since it was issued and you’ll need a minimum of three or six months to gain entry into many destinations.
It must also be no more than ten years since it was issued and you’ll need a minimum of three or six months to gain entry into many destinations.
A spokesperson for the Passport Office said they are aware a ‘small number of people’ using the urgent service have experienced a ‘technical issue ‘when booking a Fast Track appointment.
‘We are working with our appointment booking service provider to resolve this issue as soon as possible,’ they said.
‘Appointments will be honoured, and any customer who does not receive notification of their booking is advised to contact the Passport Adviceline to confirm the appointment.’
They added that the ‘vast majority’ of all passports applications are being finalised ‘well within 10 weeks’.
‘We have increased staff numbers by 500 since April 2021,’ they added. ‘This has helped us to handle more applications than ever before, with more than one million passport applications processed in March 2022.’
The booking website for a one-week fast-track appointment has faced intermittent outages for over a week.
An automated message on the booking page states: “We don’t have any appointments available at the moment. Please try again later. The service will reopen when more appointments are added.”
On the occasion that travellers are able to get past this error message, they will usually find no appointments available..