My passport was nearly at the end of its life and I’m hoping to be applying for a French visa and making the move to France well before I get a telegram from the King, so on Friday I finally got around to visiting the photo booth in the local supermarket.
I did everything on-line, paid the standard fee and on Monday sent them my old passport as requested - they acknowledged receipt on Wednesday.
I received various messages about likely days / weeks of delay and assumed that the message from Royal Mail referred to the return of my OLD passport.
Today, 26th June I received my NEW passport dated 25th June - with no indication that it had been despatched from Poland where they are apparently printed…
SIX days ! It’s just as well I didn’t need it in a hurry and hadn’t paid the hefty premium to get it quickly. !
The process for renewing a Passport in the UK is very impressive… After seeing what my missus went through to get hers, I think the French could learn something from the Brits (it’s been a while since I’ve said that!)
Yes the Passport Office is one bit of UK bureaucracy that does seem to work well!
I last renewed mine in Feb 2023 (partly because I had less than a year left on the old one and partly to avoid an imminent price rise), and got the new one in about 10 days.
(That’s UK to UK and not on the priority service).
As I did 10 years ago I just renewed my UK driving licence using my new passport data.
It was far more elaborate than last time.
I had to install an android app, point the camera at the photo page on the new passport, lay the phone on the passport to get the biometric data wirelessly and let them see my face via the selfie camera …
I’m finding quite a few bits of UK bureaucracy work very well.
Within a couple of days of requesting a legislation letter from NHS Overseas confirming ineligibility for an S1, we received the relevant email, together with a French translation. A hard copy arrived in the post a few days later.
And last week I had to contact the vehicle licensing people in Northern Ireland to request a fresh certificate of entitlement (because the old one has expired since I applied to ANTS). It arrived by email 2 days later. Followed by a hard copy in the post.
In the meantime, no news from ANTS after almost 5 months. And no news from the CPAM after 5 months.
We had to chase ours up when we moved. They had them at the préfecture but couldn’t be arsed to tell us, like they “forgot” to tell us we needed a timbre fiscal. To be even more difficult they gave us appointments a week apart.
You normally need to go to the préfecture to exchange old for new.
