Passports: Applications
(asked on 6th January 2023) - View Source
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 3 January 2023 to Question 104227, in addition to the percentage figures provided, if she will she provide figures on the number of passports applications not fully processed within 10 weeks in each of the last three years.
Since April 2021, His Majesty’s Passport Office has advised people to allow up to 10 weeks when applying for their passport using the standard service in the UK. Of the standard UK applications resulting in a printed passport in the week ending 15 January 2023, 99.2% had been processed within ten weeks
The application processing capacity was reduced in the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Published processing times for overseas applications vary, starting from 11 weeks.
The number of UK and overseas applications that were processed in over ten weeks for each year from 2020, is shown in the table below:
Year | Total printed * | Volume over 10 weeks | Percentage over 10 weeks |
2020 | 3,880,691 | 308,468 | 7.95% |
2021 | 4,525,441 | 61,210 | 1.35% |
2022 | 7,583,557 | 409,063 | 5.39% |
* Data for priority services is recorded as performance against the respective service level only (1 day for Premium, 7 days for Fast Track), with the end-to-end processing time not being held in a reportable format. Passports printed under a priority service are therefore excluded.