Anyone work for the passport office and can explain this mystery to me?

[MrsBlakesBattenburg]

I'm British and live in Europe and have recently applied for UK passports for my kids. All fine, approved, though they did additionally request my parents' birth certificates, which my mum sent to them directly, with an envelope and her address in the hope that her documents would be returned to her and not to me. Thankfully she did get them back!

The passports have arrived, great.

DHL delivered a package today, which I assumed was my documents, but no. The only thing it contained was the single empty envelope that my mum had sent them with her address on it.

Someone had used the address on that envelope to send her the package with her documents (they did not have my parents' address otherwise), but had then decided to put it in a separate envelope and send it abroad to me?? Why??

They have to use their own postal equipment including envelopes for security, and they were just returning any outstanding property to you.

And managed to send it to the wrong person. Classic passport office.

Not quite that simple, they will have processes to follow. It was a bit silly to assume they could use a random envelope.

But it was part of the OP's application, so they were right to send it to her.

It was the legal property of the person that sent it, together with their documents. It was a mistake, and not your mistake, so why are you hell-bent on defending it?

But it was sent to them with my parents' birth certificates, so if it was so important to return everything, why not send it back with those birth certificates?

I'd probably not even have thought much about it if they'd returned it to me with my documents (which arrived after this) but it was in its very own envelope!

"Hell bent on defending them"? I made one comment on why it could have happened. You need to get out of the heat.