Advice please. Passport nightmare!

[Chummychoos]

Please can anyone help with this situation 🤞
My son was issued a new passport in August 2019 (aged 15). That same year we went on holiday in the October. Due to COVID the passport then wasn’t used.
Last year he applied for a DBS check and wanted to use his passport as identification but it was rejected as it had a ‘marker’ on it.
As advised we contacted the passport office to find out what was wrong only to be told that the passport had been cancelled back in August 2019.
I questioned this and explained that we had flown out of the country and back again but they couldn’t offer any explanation and were unsure how it had been allowed as it was not a valid passport.
They apologised for the error and said it would reinstated as there was no reason for it to have been cancelled in the first place.
Fast forward to now, my son is due to go on holiday in 7 weeks and for months we have been trying to get the passport office to confirm that his passport is now actually valid and working. We have spent hours on calls, on hold, explaining the story over and over again trying to get someone to just tell us if it is valid. We have awaited call back after call back and seem to be getting nowhere with it.
With only 7 weeks now until his holiday we are literally at our wits end and don’t know what to do.
I have actually considered booking a cheap one way flight somewhere just to test the water, and my husband suggested we could check in online to see if it would work.
Im not sure if this is a fail safe idea as I’m not sure how the online check ins work in relation to passport validity.
If anyone could offer ANY help or advice we would be super grateful.

Online check in won’t be able to tell you if the passport is valid or not. Some airlines - flying to US for example - do check passports and visa numbers before issuing the boarding pass, but a cheap ticket to France on Ryanair won’t be able to verify that for you. They often issue the boarding pass without any automatic electronic checks in the background. They did it even during Covid when docs were required and some airlines wouldn’t issue boarding passes until they saw them in person. So that’s not a guarantee.

The only other thing I could think of is booking a one way ticket but not checking in online - go to the desk at the airport and see if they’re able to verify his passport?

I’ve never had a UK passport so I don’t know if this is a thing here - but in my home country you can ‘verify’ your passport at the local police station. They have machines that tell you if it’s valid, although they’re mostly used for ID cards. Worth a phone call?

OP, is your MP any good? This is just the sort of issue on which an MP should step in to help a constituent, but obviously MPs are of variable quality.

Can you make an appointment at a passport office? Speak face to face with someone?

Thank you for your advice. I wasn’t convinced the online check in was enough to confirm it, but it seemed like it was worth a try at this stage

We don’t seem to be able to get any appointments anywhere. We considered applying for a fast track passport and cancelling the other one (if it isn’t already cancelled) but you can’t get appointments

Why no apply for a DBS check again and see if it is accepted

That’s actually not a bad idea 🤔