Following the announcement that more than 1,000 passport office workers have planned to strike for 5 weeks you may be concerned if you have travel plans this summer.
We have put together some advice and some new features to the site which we hope will relieve your stress during the strikes.
When are the strikes?
The planned strikes are from the 3rd April until 5 May 2023.
I applied before the strikes were announced, will my application be delayed?
It’s hard to say for sure, but with the current crowd sourced average being under 20 days for both 1st passports and renewals you would like to think your application will not be too far off this figure.
I plan to travel this summer, how will this effect me?
Firstly, don’t panic and check if is it actually necessary to renew your passport. There is a lot of misinformation about how much time you need on your passport. It is important to check the rules for the country you are visiting.
If you are planning to travel to an EU country or Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino or Vatican City, you must follow the Schengen area passport requirements.
Your passport must be:
- issued less than 10 years before the date you enter the country (check the ‘date of issue’)
- valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave (check the ‘expiry date’)
Certain countries require 6 months validity, however some countries even allow you to stay right up to the expiry of your passport but it is important you do check this on the GOV website
Knowing exactly what the requirements are for the country you are visiting may prevent an unnecessary application.
Should I apply for the 1 week Fast Track option?
Our advice would be only of you absolutely need to. The 1 Week Fast Track application requires you to attend an interview at a Passport Office location. The problem is there are a limited number of appointments available at each office. At the time of writing there is a queue to get on the appointment page which took 1 minute. Once on the page, there were only appointments available in Belfast. If you do need to Fast Track we recommend checking the Twitter account @ukpassportcheck which provides latest information and updates about available appointments.
How long will my passport take during the strike action?
It is hard to predict exactly how long passports applications are going to take given the surge in applications. We expect times will increase in the period before the strikes commence and during due to the surge in demand and reduced workforce. The Passport Office have said they will still be processing passports within the 10 week guideline which they state on the website.
Our new calculation of 7 days of data.
To give a more accurate picture of the impact caused by the strikes we are going to calculate and publish an average from the last 7 days of data we receive. Our normal published average is calculated from applicant data received over the past 30 days. By publishing a 7 day average it is going to give people a much better idea of the immediate impact of the strikes on processing times. We will be publishing case studies of current applicants so you can see step by step what stage they are at in the process.
The new average wait time will be calculated and updated daily from Monday 20th March 2023.
