The UK’s Passport Office has been urged to be better prepared for continued high demand for new passports in 2023 after 360,000 travellers had to wait more than the target 10 weeks for their travel document to arrive.
A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that an estimated five million people delayed renewing their passports in 2020 and 2021 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a rush of applications as international travel opened up earlier this year.
Forecasts suggest that at least three million of these people have still not renewed their passports, which will create another year of high demand in 2023 when they get round to doing so!
While the Passport Office was able to process a record number of applications this year, delays were caused for “hundreds of thousands” of people due to several factors such as recruitment challenges, limitations in processing applications digitally and “unsuccessful efforts” to manage demand.
So the advice is, if you need to renew, do so early whilst HMPO prepare themselves for the higher-than-average demand expected in 2023.
