Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for (a) passport renewal and (b) a first passport were classified as in progress in each month since June 2014.

The work in progress for every month covering the period from June 2014 until January 2015 can be found in the table below categorised as requested.

* First passports WIP also include lost/stolen passport numbers. It is not possible to split first passport and lost/stolen passport applications at the summary level available.

First passport : an applicant applying for their first passport. First time adult applicants are required to attend an interview to confirm their identity (irrespective of whether they are British born or newly naturalised). First time child applications are subject to additional checks compared to a child renewal application. First time applications therefore take longer to process than their renewal equivalents.

**WIP Definition Is the total number of applications in the system that have yet to be processed by HMPO and the application is not awaiting a customer response. WIP definition was revised in December 2014 to exclude the following applications: security check query and customer query.

WIP excludes: Online applications awaiting declaration forms, BPO/examiner/security check query raised, applicants awaiting interview (and dependents of adults awaiting interview) and applications that have been passed for issue but have yet to be printed. This was revised in December 2014 to exclude the following applications: security check query and customer query.

Caveat: Data source: BOXI universe from HMPO Application Management System. Due to the large volume of management information run the data may be subject to change.