GB News was reporting on the passport delays thousands of people are currently facing, weeks before they jet off on holiday. Rosie Wright was outside the Passport Office in central London and spoke to someone who is trying to apply for a new passport.
Rosie began: “There’s a lot of disgruntled people at the passport office this morning.
“Currently, if you pay £75.50 for an adult passport, the passport office is telling you, you could be waiting up to 10 weeks to get your passport back.
“And in some cases, it is taking much longer.
“Now they say they are experiencing unprecedented demand – and that has come from two real sources.
“The first is that of course, for the majority of the last two years we weren’t even allowed to go on holiday, so people didn’t think about renewing their passports.
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Rosie began: “There’s a lot of disgruntled people at the passport office this morning.
“Currently, if you pay £75.50 for an adult passport, the passport office is telling you, you could be waiting up to 10 weeks to get your passport back.
“And in some cases, it is taking much longer.
“Now they say they are experiencing unprecedented demand – and that has come from two real sources.
“The first is that of course, for the majority of the last two years we weren’t even allowed to go on holiday, so people didn’t think about renewing their passports.
“And the second problem is the expiry date has new significance – before we left the European Union, you could go on holiday right up until your passport expired, that is no longer the case.”
She continued: “Someone who’s been caught out by that is Adam, who’s come to the Passport Office this morning, trying to get his passport like several other people.
“Just explain, you’re supposed to be going on your first post-Covid holiday to Portugal and it’s looking in jeopardy now.”
Adam replied: “We’re supposed to be going to Portugal in two and a half weeks’ time.
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“Last Sunday we read a news article that people had been caught by this new Brexit rule, and it applied to us – my wife’s passport is from April 2012, it doesn’t expire until next January, we filled in all the forms on British Airways and now we read we may not be allowed into Portugal as her passport is more than 10 years old.
“We’re desperately trying to get a new passport for her.”
Rosie continued: “You’ve got some options, normally on the website, you can apply to have your passport fast-tracked, you’ve tried to do that, what’s happening?”
He explained: “So, fast-track is a one week service, there’s online premium which is a same-day service.
Rosie added: “There was one father who said to me ‘the cost of our holiday has just gone up over £200’ because they have to fast-track their children’s passports.
“In Adam’s case, he can’t get an appointment to get a fast-track application in the first place.
“I have spoken to the passport office and they said the cheapest and easiest way is to apply online but you’re going to have to wait 10 weeks, that takes us up to the first week of June.”
Express.co.uk contacted the Passport Office for comment.