Passport Office Same-day Service

...advice applies only to priority passport renewals by UK citizens - it doesn't cover first passports or anyone whose nationality is more 'complicated'. Other procedures apply in those instances.

===Do you know where your passport is? Do you know when it's due to expire?===

Organised readers will smugly be thinking "Yep, it's in the top drawer, under the insurance paperwork with another 5 years to run". Some ...
...kind of delay at the passport office. A lady I once worked with had to cancel her family holiday when she realised the day before she was going that her youngest child didn't have a passport at all (apparently it's not the afterbirth that comes out after the baby - it's your memory) and I've also known people to lose or have their passports stolen. An ex-boyfriend went round Africa with his in a money belt and sweated so badly that all the ink ran ... more

Note this advice applies only to priority passport renewals by UK citizens - it doesn't cover first passports or anyone whose nationality is more 'complicated'. Other procedures apply in those instances.

Do you know where your passport is? Do you know when it's due to expire?

Organised readers will smugly be thinking "Yep, it's in the top drawer, under the insurance paperwork with another 5 years to run". Some readers may be wriggling in their seats slightly uncomfortably thinking "Well I know where it should be but I'm not completely sure and it must be due to run out soon because I still had hair/didn't have wrinkles/had that ridiculous make-up when the photo was done". Or maybe one or two of you are going to spend a few hours worrying because you really can't remember where you put it or when it runs out.

Recently my neighbours had to cancel their holiday when their passports got caught up in a strike or some kind of delay at the passport office. A lady I once worked with had to cancel her family holiday when she realised the day before she was going that her youngest child didn't have a passport at all (apparently it's not the afterbirth that comes out after the baby - it's your memory) and I've also known people to lose or have their passports stolen. An ex-boyfriend went round Africa with his in a money belt and sweated so badly that all the ink ran and it was unusable (sweaty boyfriend = ex-boyfriend, you notice!).

Personally, I know exactly where my passports are - one's in my handbag, the other's in the bureau at home. So how could I - someone who's had two passports for about 15 years - get into the situation of needing to do a same-day service application at the passport office? Surely I should know better and have been able to plan to get my reserve passport renewed without having to go to the additional expense of a same-day issue. In fact, the circumstances were not so much down to bad planning, but more a case of just needing the convenience of a quick turnaround.

Some aspects of my application were very organised. I went online to fill in all my details and the IPS (no longer called the Passport Office - it's now the Identity and Passport Service) sent me through the printed form with the notes about what I needed to send them and how to do it. Then it all went a bit pear-shaped. Just as I was about to send off my old expired passport, I read the line stating that all current passports would need to be sent. My assumption that I could just send the expired one and keep the second one which I needed for a trip that week, was completely wrong.

To give them credit, I eventually got through to the passport help line which - amazingly - has nice real human beings available at all hours of the day and night. A very pleasant gentleman told me that if I wrote a covering letter explaining that I couldn't send the second passport because I needed it for work, I'd probably be OK. The trouble was that 'probably' wasn't good enough and, with it being an application for a second passport which is something that's still relatively unusual, I wasn't entirely sure that our secretary's letter of justification was going to swing it. Added to this, I needed to send my passport away for an Indian visa for our forthcoming holiday and had just realised that it might also have to go off for a Bhutanese visa as well. Hubby was turning purple because he'd had so really suffer last year over getting the Indian visas (there's a review about that experience as well) so in the interests of avoiding a 'domestic', I decided to go to the passport office and sort it out once and for all.

Making the Appointment

The first thing you need to know is that you can't just turn up at a passport office - you have to make an appointment and that's non-negotiable. No appointment means you won't even get through the door. Getting one requires a call to the helpline number on the website and the patience to sit through lots of button pressing and listening to recorded messages. Once I got a human, I explained that I needed a premium service and asked if I could choose which passport office I attended. This might sound daft but I live closest to Peterborough office but work closest to Liverpool, so which one would be needed was going to depend on whether they could give me the date I wanted. I asked to have the latest possible appointment a few days later at Peterborough and was given a 12.30 appointment and a reference code which I was told I would need in order to get into the passport office. I was also asked if I wanted my confirmation by mail or email and since I was about to leave for the airport and wouldn't be home for a letter, I asked for email.

Sure enough, shortly after I had my confirmation email.

Some local info on Peterborough Passport Office

I worked in Peterborough for 18 months and learned that there are only two good reasons to visit the city (apologies to those who live there, but a lot have said before that they agree) - the first is the spectacular cathedral and the second is the passport office. Bear this in mind because if you are travelling there from afar you'll have a few hours to kill and you might want to go with a plan of action. With 4 hours to spare, I'd recommend the cathedral and then a speedy escape to somewhere like Oundle or Stanford unless you particularly enjoy pound shops.

Recognising that the passport office is one of the city's key attractions, the local signposting is really helpful in directing you to the right place. There's a multi-storey car park beside Peterborough market which is the closest place to park for the Passport office. It's a 'Pay and Display' which is a blatant way for the council to play on your fears about how long you might need because once you are in the office, it's not easy to escape and come back to add another half hour to your parking ticket. If you are arriving shortly before your allotted time, I think a one hour ticket ought to be enough unless you are planning to stick around all day waiting for your passport whilst you 'see the sight' of Peterborough (like I said, there's only the one!). Also, take care to note which floor you are - first time I used that car park I actually thought my car had been stolen - it took me 30 minutes to find it.

What happens at the Passport Office?

When you booked your appointment, you would have been told not to turn up more than 10 minutes before your allotted time. Don't be tempted to go too early as they won't let you in. I was there about 15 minutes ahead and waited patiently for them to start letting people through on the dot of 12.30. Two ladies in the line behind me were getting utterly stressed because one of them had a manicure set in her capacious handbag and in order to get in to the office you have to pass through an airport-style security check. So tip number one - don't go to the passport office with your toolbox, beauty kit, collection of knives or other weapons. Treat it as you would an airport although you won't have to take your shoes off. I suggested to the ladies to just ask the security guy to look after their 'weapons' until they had finished. You also MUST take your confirmation letter or email or they won't let you in.

Through the security check and the next stage is to go to the reception desk and show the guy on duty that you already have your photographs. He won't give you a number for going to the main desks until he's happy that your photos are in order - so no photos with smiling, no winking, no hair over your eyes, glasses, baseball hats and so on. If he's happy he'll give you a number and you can take a seat.

I was issued with my number and there was only one other person ahead of me so there was no time to settle down with the crossword. About two minutes later my number came up and I went to the counter, the lady checked my passport and my form and gave me an invoice to pay. Because I have the second passport she took a photocopy of that as well. Despite being told to take lots of identification (yeah, like a passport isn't enough!) she said they very rarely check the utility bills, driving licenses etc when applicants come in person. This may be worth keeping in mind because I found it really hard - now that so many of our bills are handled on-line - to track down in-date bills.

I next waited one or two minutes at the cashier's desk to pay for my passport - it would have been quicker but someone in front needed change for the photo booth. I used my credit card and they are happy to take the usual forms of payment such as cash, credit or debit card, postal orders and even cheques with a guarantee card.

In total once I'd got through the security check, I was in and out in under ten minutes and well within my hour for the car park. Throughout my visit the waiting board showed that there were never more than 3 people in the queue. It might help to know my application was done in mid-August which isn't a particularly quiet time for emergency applications. By controlling the number of appointments, the Passport Office seem to have everything pretty much under control.

Collection

Standard collection procedures are to turn up 4 hours after the time on your payment receipt. Knowing the area well - and hence knowing there wasn't anything I particularly wanted to do - I picked up some lunch, set off to a park on the outskirts of town, parked up with a book and a newspaper and settled down to wait. After about an hour and a half, I got a call on my mobile from the Passport Office. My old passport had a special message on one of the pages and the call was to tell me that they'd forgotten to transfer it to the new one, and did I want them to start again. I asked when the passport would be ready if I didn't get them to start over and when she told me I could probably get it an hour later, I agreed not to bother with the change. Hence, in about two and a half hours, I went back to collect.

When collecting you don't have to go through the rigmarole of security. You just hand in your receipt at a counter at the entrance to the building and a nice man looks through a box of envelopes and hands you your new passport. Knowing this ought to be a very quick process, I parked in the bus stop directly outside, leapt out and grabbed my passport and was off again a couple of minutes later.

Is it worth it?

I won't go into too much detail on the costs of passports as they change every year and for some reason, people seem to get irate about the cost. However, for the same day service, the cost at the time of writing (September 2009) is £38 on top of the normal passport charges. There is also a one week priority service - make an appointment and follow the same procedure at the office but go back and collect 7 days later instead of 4 hours - for which the supplement is currently £20.

In the last 15 years I've done four priority passport applications - three at Peterborough and one at Liverpool (admittedly most of them paid by companies I've worked for); one on one-week turnaround and three on same day. This time I decided to part with my own cash and for me, the convenience and security of knowing my passport doesn't go outside the four walls of the Passport Office is well worth the cost. Added to this the botheration factor of being without my passport for 2 weeks or more is really tiresome. It was trying to find a period when I didn't need my passports that led to me letting the spare one expire.

However if you travel rarely and plan well ahead, then you can leave it to the post office to look after your documents and save the money. If you should ever find yourself in a situation of realising your passport expired and you can't trust to the luck of the post, then it's good to know that you can fall back on the priority service. It's easy, it's quick and £38 and a trip to the passport office seems like a bit of a bargain compared to losing your holiday or stressing over whether you'll get your passport in time. 

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