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
-
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.
