Hundreds of thousands of people were let down by HM Passport Office (HMPO) over the last year, with “unacceptable” delays in receiving their passports, a report from the Public Accounts Committee has concluded.
The scathing document said that HMPO “lacks ambition” to perform better, raises doubts around digital transformation, and suggests there may be knock-on effects for years to come.
Although 95 per cent of customers between January and September 2022 received their travel documents within the advertised 10 weeks, around 360,000 people were forced to wait longer.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said “ultimately [HMPO]’s performance let down” applicants, and “the consequences of these delays included people being unable to travel for family emergencies, losing money spent on holidays and having difficulties proving their identities”.
HMPO has blamed the record number of passport applications received in 2022, when the last of the UK’s Covid-19 travel restrictions were lifted. However, total demand in 2022 was lower than it forecasted.
Among the failings uncovered was the Passport Office’s digital system being unable to handle demand, meaning 134,000 applications were moved to a less efficient paper-based system.
Those moved onto the legacy paper process should have been bumped up to the front of the queue for processing. Instead, they were treated as new cases, and the number of weeks it had taken to process the application was reset to zero; as a result, HMPO did not know how long these applicants had actually been waiting for their passports, and many were incorrectly informed that their applications had only recently been received.
Labour MP Nick Smith, joint lead on this inquiry, said that issues with passport applications “became the number one casework issue in my office, crowding out other important work as staff strove to help with multiple urgent cases every day.”
He added: “It is disappointing that HMPO’s decision-making failed to focus on the customers’ experience during this frustrating time, and I’m concerned that a failure to upgrade their clunky system may result in similar scenes this year.”
The investigation believes that problems were exacerbated by the poor performance of contractors. PAC said that IT consultancy Sopra Steria – responsible for opening and scanning paper applications and supporting documentation – did not achieve its service level targets for five months in 2022. Teleperformance, responsible for the customer support telephone line, did not meet its targets for four months.
The report further states that “HMPO has shown a concerning lack of curiosity about the consequences of these delays for its customers and has not put the customer’s perspective at the centre of its decision-making.”
Peter Grant, Scottish National Party MP and also the investigation’s joint lead, stressed that staff performed as well as could be expected.
“The level of service our constituents received from the Passport Office last spring and summer was simply unacceptable. Passport Office staff did the best they could but they were fighting a losing battle against antiquated processes and poor planning.”
He added: “This has given the committee real concern as to whether the Passport Office really understands how much it needs to improve if the public are to get the level of service they’re entitled to expect.”
Another surge of passport applications is expected in 2023, with the PAC warning that HMPO will need to be “bolder in trying to manage demand rather than just reacting to it.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “2022 was a record-breaking year, with HM Passport Office issuing 8.4m passports. We worked hard to meet this unprecedented demand and make improvements, hiring hundreds more staff to ensure customers could get their passports in time for travel.
“This action has also meant we have already issued a further record 2.7 million passports so far this year, well within the required standard, with over 99.7 per cent of standard applications being processed within 10 weeks and the majority of those delivered to customers well under this timescale, including 94.5 per cent within three weeks. We remain committed to ensuring that we provide the best possible service to our customers.”
Sopra Steria said in a statement that they are “disappointed” by the committee’s findings but “will take on board any feedback to help improve our services in the future”. Teleperformance have been apporoached for comment.
Rachel Tompkins, a writer and editor, was one of the many thousands caught by the delays. She applied for passport renewals for her two sons in May 2022, 10 weeks ahead of their holiday to Sweden and at a cost of £108. Despite chasing – and spending almost 200 hours on the phone to the Passport Office – she was still without the passports 24 hours before the family were due to travel.
She told The Independent: “After weeks of calling the Passport Office and going around in circles, my husband ended up travelling over 200 miles at 3.30am in the morning from our home in Oxfordshire to the passport office in Durham, where we had been told our passports were.
“Upon arrival at 7.30am, he was greeted by a huge queue of people in the same situation, and it was over eight hours before he finally got the passports in his hand, arriving home at 8.30pm that evening.
“The whole experience was incredibly frustrating and stressful, and I didn’t think we would make it on holiday. Fortunately, thanks to my husband’s time, efforts and determination, we did, but sadly I fear many people weren’t as lucky.”
One mother was left “gutted” last year when she had to tell her five-year-old son that he wouldn’t be going away for what would have been his first ever beach holiday, as his travel document failed to arrive.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the average wait time for a passport renewal was closer to three weeks.
The average wait time is now 10 weeks, more than three times what it was in 2018. In February of that year, the then-immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, told parliament: “We currently process 99.9 per cent of straightforward applications within three weeks.
“On average, customers making a non-priority application can expect their passport to be issued seven working days after the application is made.”
