Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the average length of time taken by her Department to process a passport application in (a) 2021 and (b) 2022.

In 2021, His Majesty’s Passport Office printed fewer than 5 million passports, compared to almost 8.4 million in 2022.

For standard UK and International applications, the median turnaround time for passport applications to be processed for each year in 2021 and 2022 is shown in the table below:

*data is held in working days working days
**data is held in calendar days

In January 2023, 99.4% of passports issued under the standard UK service were processed within the published guidance of 10 weeks.