Just for information for those whose U.K passport is nearing expiry. Just received my new passport today almost 4 weeks to the day I sent it off. Thank you again Royal Mail for screwing up with a late delivery and sending me a cheque
Be aware however, that HMPO are now advising up to 10 weeks for a simple passport renewal. Remember, it’s cheaper if you send off the application and upload a photo online.
Mine was a simple renewal. I gather HMPO are now carrying out extra checks because allegedly, criminal gangs have been somehow managing to obtain genuine passports with ‘lookalike’ photos in them for use by criminals.
When my Wife renewed hers 3 or 4 months ago, it took just 5 days from applying online to receiving her new passport. Obviously however, the travel industry has opened up significantly since she applied for her renewal.
For those not aware, at least six months remaining on a U.K passport is required prior to visiting many countries. Don’t be caught out by thinking you can just ‘wing it’ and believe you might get away with having just a couple of months left on your old passport and buggering off on holiday, especially if like mine, you had extra months added to your previous passport. The rules surrounding added months to old passports have changed I believe.
Very impressed with the new passport from a security perspective. It totally looks the dogs bits
Oh, and before anyone goes on about the colour, I personally love it, though it’s a far cry from the blue passports of old of which I still have my very first issued passport from the late 1970’s.
I’m on a train back from London at the moment. My boys have dual nationality and we’ve just renewed their passports at the US Embassy. Kids’ passports require a face-to-face appointment, so every five years we have an excuse to have a mini-break to London Managed to fit in the zoo, Science Museum and Shrek Experience this time.
We were there Friday to Tuesday and I could do with a loan now… on Saturday we grabbed some burgers at Five Guys and, when they gave me the total, I asked them if I could pay in instalments
Some friends used the Post Office system to renew. You go into a booth to get your photo taken, answer a few questions, say goodbye to £95 and go home. A week later their passports arrived at their home address. R-
Clearly, I have no idea when your friends applied for their passports and had them back a week later, but as far as I can see, unless they were in a similar position as which my Wife was in a few months back in the middle of a pandemic with little sky traffic and whereby she used a standard renewal service and got her passport back within 5 working days, the current wait time is between 4 and 10 weeks. I doubt that just letting a Post Office do all the work facilitates a faster turn around time.
You can of course get a new passport urgently, I believe it can even be done on the day, but that is only for a renewal and can cost up to £200 for the privilege. Otherwise, a fast track one week service currently costs £142 for a standard adult renewal.
At the end of the day, if people for whatever reason feel as though they need to use a Post Office to do a simple passport renewal and pay the extra money involved, that’s entirely their choice. Personally, I have little desire to use a Post Office for anything but unfortunately, I had little choice but to send my old passport back via Special Delivery because it still had six months validity remaining on it but of course it would have only had four months validity left on it by the time I am due to go away and therefore I stood the chance of being refused entry to where I’m going.
I’d like to point out too, I’m as tight as they come! Spending anymore than I have to on anything goes completely against my moneysaving mantra. A digital photo taken on an iPhone and uploaded onto HMPO site, takes seconds, I don’t need to sit in a PhotoMe booth and be blinded and end up with even more of a dumb look on my face than is already there
I genuinely don’t know how ‘ordinary’ Londoners manage with prices there. Ok, so Londoners get paid more hourly because of the extra expense, but I suspect it nowhere near covers folks real world spending. I now live back in my native South West and it isn’t that cheap here either. Living in the Midlands I found to be very reasonable from a cost of living perspective.
I believe the last time I entered Central London, was back in 2009. I won’t be visiting again if I can possibly help it!
Date revision, it was actually sometime in 2010 the last time I was in London proper. Indeed in the last 10 years, I’ve been to the Caribbean no less than 7 times and believe me, I’d rather get out my new passport and go to Antigua or Barbados any day over miserable old Londonium
Central London is mostly tourists, oligarchs and bankers.
Otherwise, retailers and national chains aren’t noticeably more expensive.
The only thing is property prices which doesn’t really impact non-residents.
As for Passport, I’m putting off getting my Priti Passport as long as possible. Can travel on my EEA Passport pretty much anywhere but never used it to re-enter the UK post Brexit.
Personally, I’m glad to see the back of that bloody awful red passport. Pre-pandemic, I’ve been a frequent global traveller. This might come across as being rather strange to some, but I began to feel incredibly jealous of Americans, Canadians, South Africans etc stood there in line with their sole country identity emblazoned on the front cover. I never truly felt European in the way I guess a lot of our Continental Europe cousins feel. I just felt with those words ‘European Union’, I had lost my identity. I guess that will make zero sense to some people reading this, but there it is.
That’s fair enough. I feel the exact opposite, though. I felt quite happy and proud to be an EU citizen. Now that my citizenship has been stripped from me, I’m quite antipathetic towards Britain, and more especially, England.
Clearly you’re referring to the fact you feel as though your ‘European citizenship’ has been stripped from you?
Personally for me as someone who was born before the U.K entered into a European Union agreement, I don’t feel as you do. I was too young at the time to be given any form of vote of what happened back in the early years, no say at all. Other people making decisions on my behalf, much as the same as it always has been and will continue to be so. Life eh?
I don’t think our ages are that far apart, tbh. I have a distinct memory of being a teenager when the debate was raging at the time, but didn’t have a vote.
But different people look at the world in different ways, which isn’t a bad thing, I guess.
I often think that those under 18 today, conveniently forget that the now middle aged adults before them, were once also under 18 and like them because of their age, didn’t have a right to vote on their future either. So it’s left to others to decide for them. Is that fair? Where does one draw the line? Perhaps we should be giving everyone over the age of 10 the vote, after all, the age of criminal responsibility starts at age 10 here in England and Wales, so if people are expected to know right from wrong at such a young age, perhaps they should be allowed to vote on such enormous future changing matters? Just as the young today may be feeling angry over recent events, I was equally as angry when I was 16 or 17 about decisions of which I had zero control over.
And then of course many of those people who complain now who are too young to vote, won’t vote when they reach voting age because they’ll complain it doesn’t get them anywhere and it isn’t worth voting. You just can’t win in this world. At least they’ll still be able to apply for a passport and I doubt any of them will give a fig what’s on the front cover, as long as they can go backpacking or hiking for a year in the Amazon
I personally view the loss as a weakening of the Passport itself .
Losing the right to reside and travel across a whole continent. I always felt safer when in or entering the EU from a non-EU state plus a measure of additional protection in a non-EU state being a UK AND EU national.
A questionable state may not care what Little England thinks but would they at least think twice about about doing something to a UK and EU national due to the hassle factor.
I highly suspect, that eventually, as with most events in life, people will eventually get over it and everyone will just move on. It might take 20 or 30 years, but one day, few people will give a damn, especially those kids that are being born today who won’t know any different because they will never have experienced the ability to do what many have taken for granted for so many years.
We’re a long off from passports, but I seem to recall an attempt at least being made to extend the vote to 16 year olds back in 2016, and wasn’t it extended to them for the Scottish Independence referendum, or am I misremembering that?
Interesting to know what you think is a questionable state in this context.
As it is, the EU doesn’t really get involved in routine consular matters - so are unlikely to be of much assistance - compared to a British/French Embassy.
You may have felt safer but this wasn’t the case. However, EU States with few embassies benefited as they could seek help from another Embassy in the event of a crisis.
There are very few countries that don’t have a British Embassy and in those, often UK interests are represented by a non EU country.
Managed to fit in the zoo, Science Museum and Shrek Experience this time.
