Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the average time taken to process a passport application in the latest period for which data is available; and if she will make a comparative assessment of the average processing time compares to pre-covid-19 pandemic levels.

Historic processing times for both 2018 and 2019 are calculated using working days only and are counted as date the application became live in the system (traditionally called cashiered intake but the point the application has all its initial docs in the Digital Application Process) to the printed date. This data excludes time an application spent awaiting interview.

Processing times for applications in 2022 are now calculated using calendar days from point of all initial documentation being received by HMPO (during the week ending 8 May 2022 this process could take up to 8 working days) to a printed terminal state. Processing times do not include any time spent awaiting delivery (for UK applications during the week ending 8 May 2022 this could take up to 4 days)

Median averages days

Mean averages days