Sorry another passport one!

[ForAFriend123]

We are due to fly out July 7th.
Sent off DS's passport for renewal (1st adult) digitally, May 28th.
Acknowledged 4th June and then that his old passport received 7th June.

Panicking slightly as although friends have said turnaround is now down to about 3 weeks, the website is quoting up to 10 weeks.

Wondering what other peoples current experience is. Is there any way I can speed the process up or cancel and book a fast track appointment (if there are any)??

www.mumsnet.com/talk/holidays/4562967-how-long-are-passport-renewals-taking-right-now

We sent away 2 adult renewals, a child renewal and a child first passport on 2nd May. Recieved the renewals on 12th May (Bootle office), 20th May (Portsmouth), 22nd May (Hemel Hempstead) and the first passport yesterday (Liverpool).

Thank you.
How do you know which passport office they went through?
Is PEX Peterborough I wonder?

Online renewal with the passport office on 7 April. Still waiting.

Ours was sent 30/03 and still waiting for one of them.

You can’t cancel the online application to do a fastrack even if you haven’t sent off the documents. I found that out the hard way.
We just got our passports back in 3 weeks from sending off the documents by using the online application.

Sorry, I meant Peterborough and not Portsmouth. All of the renewals had a PEX number but I presumed which office they were processed at based on where I sent old passports/birth certificate. Hope this helps and you get sorted soon

All applications get a PEX number

The office that's doing yours will be the one which you sent the old one too.

You can do nothing about speeding it up until 10 weeks have elapsed, or until you are within two weeks of travel (you need documentary proof of travel dates)

Do look at the main thread (linked above) as it's got lots of useful info on when and how to contact the various passport offices effectively.

Not a while lot you can do. It has been very, very, very well publicised in the media that passport wait times can be 10 to 12 weeks so sending it off at the end of May is a bit of a gamble really. Face to face appointments are hard to come by too so while you could cancel and get to book a fast track you might not get a date until after you are due to fly. They don't do anything in terms of fast tracking your current application until you are able to fly so realistically all you can do is wait and hope.

We're travelling in August so I renewed all ours that needed doing in April. They all went to different passport offices and took different amounts of time. All straight up renewals though not a first adult which can involve an interview to confirm identity and therefore take longer.

It is unusually bad this year.

Times always increase just ahead of the holiday season, as that's when people think to check. But if course there's all those who didn't renew expired passports during covid as they weren't going anywhere who are adding to the application numbers this year.

When they say 10 weeks, they mean it.

9Mercifully, they do still seem to be able to do exceptional compassionate applications really quickly0

I don't think you need an interview for a first adult passport if it's a renewal, just if it's your first ever passport.

Once the notification of documents received came in, our passports came fairly quickly - within 2 weeks. We still havnt received our old passports back- in fact DH received someone else's and needed to post it on to them....

My application will be just shy of 6 weeks by the time we fly (yes I know it's stupidly close!)

Am also on a "Passport Chaos" FB page and seems that if it gets to 48 hours beforehand you can go to your local passport office and they'll issue there and then.
Praying it doesn't get that close 😩

My online renewal has just been turned around in 3 weeks. My new passport is apparently on way to me but I haven’t received it yet. I was surprised how quickly it was approved so there’s hope @ForAFriend123!

Thank you! 🙏

I think they don't acknowledge receipt of the old passport until they are ready to start actually processing the application.

One of ours took about 10 days for the receipt of the old passport to be confirmed, but once that had happened, the new passport was delivered very quickly afterwards, maybe 4-5 days later.

(2DC renewals, done online 1 May. Old passports sent off on 3 May, new passports received 12 May & 21 May).

I got an acknowledgment of old passport received 5 days after sending it off.
Nothing else since 7 June

I would say my approval text came through about a week after receipt of old passport was confirmed (which was actually about a week after the post office had confirmed delivery) just to give you an idea of my timescale.

DD’s renewal, 86 days waiting still nothing.

I’ve given up chasing it. It’s was our first jaunt out of the country since covid, it’s looking less likely we’ll get to see family this summer.