The UK passport office seems to be working off totally random timings at the moment - my OH sent his off for renewal on 14 March and got it back today! And that also included them rejecting his first photo and having to submit another one. When the electronic application was submitted (13 March) it replied saying it was taking 11 weeks at the moment.
Glad to hear you got it sorted easily in the end Castro.
Although it's not the same thing as I am within the UK but I recently had a renewal to get my Brexit Blue Passport and it took 2 weeks from them receiving it to my receiving it on the dot.
Wow so glad it worked. And yet very surprised they would do emergency passport for a holiday.
Enjoy - may we ask? where are you off to?
We're off to Antalya, Turkey for a week. Its probably still a little too cold to swim in the sea, but the resort should have plenty of activities to keep the kids busy.
P.S Forgot to add that an emergency passport isn't accepted everywhere (e.g. Dubai) so you should always check in advance.
Thanks for the update. We sent 1 child passport renewal application to UK on 4 April, UK passport system shows documents (old passport) received on 17 April. I'll let you know how long it takes...I might be trying out the emergency passport if it doesnt arrive on time.
I didn't realise this was now online service too
Literally did this this week.
Go to the website and supply all forms. (sorry don't have link, Emergency travel documentation for overseas, something like that..)
Book an appointment for an interview in Bern and get ready to sign your child off school as they will also have to attend.
Parents not attending the interview will have to fill the consent form to be supplied as part of the above.
Parents not attending will be contacted during the interview by phone by the uk govt representative. If they are not available to take the call it's going to delay things!!
The interview within the embassy building was conducted via iPad. Weird but I guess you have to be there to prove who you are and to collect the docs later anyway.
Got the documents within an hour or two.
Whole process was done in about 3-4 days from initial request for documents to having them in my grubby mitts.
You can state up to a maximum of five countries and have to specify exact dates of travel within these countries. Child will also have to travel with the adult holder of the passport listed in the emergency document!
Hope this helps.
Although they ask for exact dates, they will state a range when you eventually get the emergency document e.g. +/- 2 weeks either side. Thats very helpful if your plans change last minute.
Also, once the process is over, at least if you use the standard application procedure, you will get a weird, long, über-Woke survey/questionnaire to complete. I dread to think what the next one in 10 years will be like.
It reminded me somehow of a crime report, many years ago now, where some pervert got hold of a hospital admissions list and and started contacting the female patients by telephone on the pretext of conducting some sort of customer experience survey. It started plausibly enough but then went on to increasing intimate questions until the it was clear to the victims that the whole thing was bogus.
Just for reference, the survey is here. I can’t find a PDF version of it so it would have to be systematically clicked through: https://passport-office-surveys.home…ortOffice0323/
One further thing to add to this...
I went to the uk passport office to get a child passport via the fast track (7 day process) as it is not allowed to use same day premium for child passports.
Getting an appointment for this was a pain in the ass but some kind soul has built a twitter bot that monitors available appointments @ukpassportcheck, worth installing twitter for that if you urgently need it, it tracks premium same day and 7 day fast track )
London, Swansea, Peterborough were NOT offered. Only Glasgow, Liverpool, Durham - bear this in mind if you are planning on travelling back! I am sure this will vary over time.
I was forced to hand in the emergency passport as they said "you cannot hold two passports at the same time" (bearing in mind I already had to surrender the "still valid but soon to expire `regular` passport in order to get the emergency one)
A little bit strange as the emergency passport has such a limited time frame anyway and I am sure if you were applying online this would not have been requested.
I then prayed that the actual "regular" passport showed up before we had to head back to Switzerland.
It did but it was a bit of stress to have NO passport whilst waiting for the "regular" one to arrive.