Passport Office may have lost my foreign passport!

[Frogponder]

I applied to renew my British passport in February at the Peterborough office. I sent my expired British and my current foreign passport as supporting docs as I have dual nationality. My new British passport arrived soon after, but in mid April my expired British passport arrived back along with someone else's foreign passport for another country. I rang customer services who said to send back the other person's passport to Peterborough with a letter explaining the mixup. I did this the next day by registered post to ensure the safety of the other person's passport. I have had an email acknowledging that this was a security breach and have also had several calls to and from customer services, they say they are looking into where my foreign passport is but can't confirm if it is lost or not. Nobody can tell me if I will be compensated if they have lost it and I then have to apply for a new foreign passport. I am required as a national of my other country to use their passport when travelling to that country. As a result I am now unable to go there to visit my family after already not travelling there for 3 years due to Covid. Has anyone had any luck sorting out a problem like this? Does anybody have a direct number for the Peterborough passport office? Customer service says you can't call them as they have no number. I am getting nowhere. Help!

Have you contacted the embassy of your other nationality to report the passport as lost? If it’s gone, it’s gone and you will need a new passport. The US is another country that requires by law that all of its citizens use their US passport to enter, even those with dual or more citizenships. So if I were to lose my US passport in the UK I’d have no choice but to go to the embassy and get another. Whether Peterborough passport office would reimburse you for your costs and inconvenience is another matter. But at least get the passport reported as lost/stolen in case someone has received it in their mail from Peterborough and has not returned it. You don’t want them to steal your identity.

Good point. It is also a national security risk for a country if passports are lost or stolen. I have not been able to get through to the London consul over the phone as they also seem swamped by the post covid passport rush. You have to renew passports in person by pre-booked appointment and the appointments are booked up weeks ahead. I've got one in June. Meanwhile after chasing customer services again the Peterborough office has emailed me to say they have 'got it back' and will post it today. That sounds like they did send it to someone else.

I need to update some details on my settled status and send both my non-UK passports to an immigration office, this is what I'm terrified of. There are so many horror stories of documents not coming back. I have important work visas on both passports and I cannot afford to lose either one of them. Nothing to add OP, just wishing you good luck and I hope it gets sorted soon. What a nightmare.

Odd we only had to send scans of of all the pages in our other passport, not the actual passport, although we are overseas not sure if that makes a difference.

We were also sent someone else’s passport, the courier company had put the envelope into a bigger plastic envelope and then muddled it. I tried sorting it with the courier company but then gave up and called the mobile number of the person whose details were on the envelope and we swapped passports in a local coffee shop!

I didn't send my daughter's other passport in when her British one came up for renewal. I rang the passport office and told them that as it was in her father's possession (she was going to visit him abroad) I couldn't supply it. So I was advised to send photocopies of each page, which I did plus a covering letter.
I since looked it up and it's a very grey area. Passport office is not legally allowed to demand another nation's passport as part of the renewal process.
I'd strongly advise anyone to never send their other passport away. They are an absolute shambles at the moment.