People across Stirling left sweating over the delivery of new passports have been forced to miss trips and holidays altogether due to delays.
Stirling’s MP Alyn Smith says he has been inundated with messages from desperate constituents scrambling to get their passports in time to sunshine breaks.
Mr Smith has blasted HM Passport Office for a “continuing series of service catastrophes” over recent months.
He said that a total of 72 constituents from across Stirling have reported receiving slow, disorganised and poor service – with some forced to miss out on trips.
The lifting of Covid-19 travel restrictions has seen a sharp increase in foreign travel, with airports and travel companies struggling to meet demand.
The performance of the Passport Office has come under increasing scrutiny, as orders are lost, delays are frequent and communication often late or confused.
One Stirling resident who was left stressing over absent passports was Leanne Wilson. She says that she was left physically unwell due to the continuing delays of her family’s application to renew their passports.
Despite applying months ahead of time, Leanne felt the paperwork fell into a “black hole”.
She said: “I honestly couldn’t believe how poor a public service could be until I underwent this process. I really feel for the frontline staff who are having to put up with extremely stressed applicants, but it’s beyond a joke.
“Both my husband and son’s renewals were dealt with in completely separate offices, in different ends of the UK, despite both applying at the same time. My emails went unanswered, calls were fruitless and it took the intervention of Alyn Smith to push the issue along and get a resolution.
“We eventually received the passports with just days to spare, at a total cost of £300, double the standard fee due to timings.
“Something is completely broken at the Passport Office.”
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Mr Smith said: “My office has been inundated with constituents desperate to hear anything about their passport applications or renewal requests.
“The system is completely inconsistent, with some applicants receiving their passports within six weeks, whilst others who sent their passport in the very same envelope have been waiting five months or longer.
“I’ve immense sympathy for the frontline staff who are struggling under severe demand, but management and UK Ministers should have seen this coming. More budget and staffing is urgently required to repair this service, deal with backlogs and restore order to what is a core government function.”
One news report this week revealed that the number of passports lost by the Home Office tripled last year amid chaos at the Passport Office in the wake of the pandemic.
Between January 1 and 31 October, 2021, 312 passports were “confirmed lost” by the agency, compared to 111 in the whole of 2020. In 2019 the number of confirmed losses stood at 168.
A further 157 passports were recorded as lost or stolen while being delivered overseas in 2021, compared to 85 in 2020 and 103 in 2019.
Figures for the final three months of the year, will be revealed next month. The rise in lost documents adds to a picture of chaos at the Passport Office, which has struggled to cope with a spike in demand following the relaxation of Covid travel restrictions.
Last month, holidaymakers were warned that the current 10-week wait for passports is likely to continue into next year. Before April 2021, the expected turnaround for passport applications was three weeks.
Thomas Greig, an HM Passport Office (HMPO) director, told MPs that more than half a million passport applications were outstanding, with 10-per cent delayed because of requests for further information.
In April, Boris Johnson threatened to privatise the Passport Office if performance did not improve.
The agency has launched a recruitment blitz this year to try to clear the backlog, although figures show the number of staff slumped between 2015 and 2021. In 2015, the Passport Office employed 4,376 full-time equivalent staff, but this fell to 3,704 in 2021. As of 30 June 2022, the agency employed 5,043 people.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Between January 1 and July 31 2021, more than 5.26 million items were successfully delivered to our customers, while just 0.006 per cent were lost.
“While this is regrettable, it represents a tiny fraction of the number of passports and supporting documents that were successfully delivered.
“Every attempt is made to recover lost or mis-delivered passports and we will continue to work with our delivery partner to develop measures to reduce the number of losses overall”.
He added: “Staff have processed the overwhelming majority of applications within the published timeframe with 97.7 per cent of applications processed in ten weeks in the first half of the year. HMPO has substantially increased its resources And will continue to recruit to cover attrition, ensuring it remains fully resourced.”
