Need a passport renewal, travelling in 5 weeks, risk check and send?

[trixymalixy]

I've seen a few threads on here with frantic people about to go on holiday not received their passports back.

Does anyone know if things have calmed down enough for us to do check and send or should we do the one week service instead?

Are you posting back an expired passport(s)?

Last time I renewed, and sent the old one back, it took a week. I was utterly amazed.

On the other hand, I still had the same address, and didn't look much different in the photo tbh. Dunno if that speed things up.

Yes. It's a renewal for DS so he looks a bit different now he's 5 than he did st 6 months old!!

I applied for my twins first passports - sent the forms off on 25 July but sent wrong fee . By the time they had written to tell me this and I had sent the right fee they said as far as they were concerned they received the forms on 10 August. And I had them both back by 28 August.
So long story short, it took them 18 days from the day they received it, and that includes a bank holiday.
I think you should be absolutely fine with 5 weeks for a renewal especially using check and send (which I will always do in future)

I think as long you have a reliable counter-signatory (because DS's appearance has changed), and send back the old passport, then Check and Send should be fine.

Got mine back last week took 12 days from sending them

In the end we used the fast track service as we had two sets of photos rejected by check and send. This was despite using one of those guaranteed photo services the second time grrrrr.

Time was marching on and when I phoned the passport service they said check and send was taking 3 weeks. I decided not to risk it and the passport arrived the day after my fast track appointment!!!!