To be annoyed with passport office

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I've just had an email stating that the person who signed my babies passport photo is not eligible, however this person has signed 2 others this year alone. So aibu to think the passport office is batshit 😅

Neither of these confirm the face belongs to the name though

'manager or personnel officer of a limited company'

Is the company a limited company?

'director, manager or personnel officer of a VAT-registered company'

Or VAT registered?

It's people who can be authenticated - so chartered professionals, people who are VAT registered, people who need to be licensed to work etc.

Yes I know, I work there

Yes and yes.

To show how stupid the system is, I've countersigned a colleagues husband's passport photo and it's passed.
I've never even met him.

🤣 this is my point with this thread, he IS eligible, but then they're saying he's not.
Crazy.

Professional photographer is an odd inclusion, as that has no licence requirements or identity checks. Likewise, "manager" is a very vague term and doesn't require professional registration. The Fit and Proper Person test only applies to registered Directors.

Isn't that fraud, punishable by imprisonment?

But that's passed because you've made a false deceleration? I'm not sure how that equates to the system being stupid - clearly its open to abuse but that doesn't mean it's fundamentally broken

Agreed, UK admin is absolute shit and often stupidly complex for no reason.

Well the whole system is batshit but I don’t think they are batshit to refuse accepting someone whose occupation isn’t on the list (even if they previously turned a blind eye)

It's on the list! That's my entire point. Manager of a Ltd company.
He is a manager of a Ltd company.

Ha ha ha VAT registration means zero - it just means HMRC will be keen to hear from you and get their cash, there's pretty much zero checking.

As others have said, it's a batshit system and a very odd list of occupations, many of whom will refuse to help anyway.

And as for "manager" or even director of a limited company, there are thousands of those who live in the Philippines and have never visited the UK - it's daft.

Right, Apols, fair enough.
having had all kinds of issues getting a photo approved in the past i’d definitely recommend just focusing on getting a different person to countersign rather than convincing them that they’re wrong.

their reasoning for rejecting pictures of DS were equally unclear but I just carried on submitting different photos and eventually at about the 5th attempt it was accepted.

Are you sure he didn't put that he's only known you for 11 months (your daughters age) rather than the oodles of years he's known you?

My DD's THIRD passport was denied for safeguarding purposes, because she doesn't have a British birth certificate. The person reviewing it said that there could be trafficking concerns?

Because she was born overseas. But both of her parents are British, we don't hold any other passports.

And it was her second renewal!!!

Thankfully, I was able to speak to the person involved and we got it sorted.

(We are now going for citizenship of our host country. Two passports are better than 1!)

It's from elitest nonsense times isn't it. Some of the biggest criminal rogues in our history have been so called professionals or people of good standing (until they weren't)

Wonder how many passports applications Harold Shipman endorsed.

That it's open to abuse is what makes the system stupid.
I'm not even British and it still passed.

@Badbadbunny Yes, but they would have to prove that I'd never met him, which they can't.

Well they are driving me wild. Trying to renew sons and it's been 6 months. They've lost my supporting documents, send with tracking so I can prove I sent it. Lost husbands supporting docs also. And now lost current application. I actually dispair. Been on hold most of my life or so it feels. No manager is ever available and can't speak to the same person twice. Raise a complaint but nothing seems to be happening. I have post office tracking of the people who signed for everything. ...but they still can't find it. I honestly don't know what to do now.

We had this once, turns out the person signing their passport had expired a couple of weeks earlier and they hadn't realised and apparently that affected their eligability

Passport now approved by a different manager.
Spoke to a supervisor at work who said they'd signed for another supervisor and he's got no official qualifications at all!
I guess it just depends who's checking the passports.