Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of passport applications initiated with the Passport Office were resolved within (a) two weeks, (b) four weeks, (c) eight weeks, (d) 12 weeks and (e) more than 12 weeks in the calendar year 2022.

Prior to 6 April 2021, the published processing times for standard applications from the UK were six weeks for over-16s applying for their first British passport, and three weeks for all other application types.

Since this date, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic.

Between March and May 2022, 98.5% of UK applications processed were completed within ten weeks.