Holidaymakers forced to use fast-track service to beat backlog trends now
View
comments
The passport backlog which plagued Britons’ holiday plans in the summer brought in £46 million for the service, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Between March and July, more than 300,000 people were forced to opt for pricey fast-track services to make sure passports arrived in time for trips abroad. Figures show that in this time the Passport Office took in £30 million more than in the same time period in 2019.
On Friday, a damning report by the Government’s spending watchdog blamed working from home practices for aggravating the backlog, which reached more than 500,000 cases at its peak in June and prompted former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to threaten to ‘privatise the a***’ off the service if it failed to tackle the fiasco.
The passport backlog which plagued Britons’ holiday plans in the summer brought in £46 million for the service, The Mail on Sunday can reveal
The office claimed to have prepared for a surge in applications after Covid restrictions ended, but the estimated 5 million submitted this summer caused the processing time for the £75.50 ‘standard’ renewal to slip from three to ten weeks – a
