Due to travel on Sunday, just found out 5 year old sons passport isn’t valid due to brexit HELP

[Shinebright21]

So due to travel to France and Italy via rail from this Sunday.

Mine, my husband and daughters passport are all valid. My sons expires on 31st July and I was under the impression you can travel, until the expiry date and we are back way before then.

Do we cancel and use our insurance to claim the money back, or just risk it and go and see what happens at the border?

Feeling utterly miserable

That screenshot does not mean that different validity rules apply to burgundy passports. It just means that holders of burgundy EU passports don't need to replace their passports early just because the UK is no longer in the EU. The validity rules requiring 3 months before expiry are not different.

Brexshit. The gift that keeps on giving and the Brexshiters on here still trying to defend it!! Good luck, OP. If anything good comes out of this thread it's that you may have saved others from the same stressful situation. FWIW, from start to finish, my mum's passport arrived within ten days.

Do they still do the same day service if you go to the passport office? That got me out of a similar jam once. It happens OP, Tbh I didn't know about the 3 month rules now either 🤷

Not for children, to help prevent abduction. Its a week minimum posted after the appointment.

It's a new, post- Brexit rule. One of hundreds, and it can be hard for some people to keep up with the many changes.

Op, I haven't see you mention how old your dc is. But if under 16, I'd risk it. The rest of you have valid passports with the correct time left. You have return tickets.

You might be turned away, but you might not. Being underage and travelling with parents who have return tickets, booked accommodation and correct paperwork would work in your dc's favour.

Obviously try for a passport office appointment first!

Wow there are some really vile comments on here! And making unhelpful remarks without any research. I see that DSRG has offered very helpful advice. Please before you comment, think if somebody sent that comment to you. I dread the day if I was a wrongfully charged for something and any of you's were in that jury! Thinking about relinquishing my membership of mums after reading this lot

We all make mistakes OP. Last summer the evening before our flight I was checking in online and discovered that DDs passport had expired. Luckily she has dual nationality and 2 passports so we used the other one but I felt absolutely sick about it and was furious with myself. I am sure you and your DH are pretty upset and don’t need anyone on here helpfully pointing out that you should have known,
Unfortunately I don’t think the chances of you getting a new passport for your son in time are great, although of course you should try. I think you need to make plans assuming it won’t happen

No there hasn't. The change is a direct consequence of Brexit. It's meant to be 3 months, but some border guards are imposing 6. It's an utterly stupid rule in my view, but that doesn't help the OP.

Can you change the dates of your trip? You will have to pay a change fee but better than losing everything. Although you may have to rebook for October half term to get the new passport back in time.

To be honest, I’d probably just risk it too. Fingers crossed they let you go. It’s a lot of money to lose without taking a chance.

That's MN for you - full of perfect people with perfect children who never put a foot wrong but are probably entitled inconsiderate wotsits in real life.

Good luck OP! We wanted to go see MIL last year as she was very ill, so not a planned trip, and I only found out about the rule as I was booking travel DH ended up going alone. It's rubbish. Hope you get it sorted.

Hi Op,

Some helpful posters have given useful advise.

We recently flew to the States but bad to upload so many documents in advance for the airline, so I guess that any passport
issues would be flagged to them in advance and he wouldn’t be able to travel.

Possibly. France to Italy will probably be ok. Not sure about the UK to France bit though. Maybe if you hand over a clutch of passports with your son's last they will only look at your properly...I guess nothing ventured nothing gained! Although they don't check on the Eurostar trains anymore, it's a proper booth like at an airport before you get on, so they probably do scan it. I can't really see that it will work :(

but this is not the first time we have seen a post like this. It seems to be a regular occurrence. When we were entering a European country we saw a woman refused entry as she had 91 days in Europe on her passport. The rule is maximum 90 days out of 180 now in Europe due to Brexit.

It seems nonsense doesn't it to have not something valid until the "valid until" date!

You would hope that a return ticket would count for something!

Not for EU countries pre Brexit.

you’re getting some really arsey replies on here, OP - I’m sorry.

Mistakes happen, with dual nationalities we have 9 passports in the house. In April I realised one of them had expired in March.

Not read it all so sorry if said already but try this site - twitter.com/ukpassportcheck - "sends an alert on Twitter when new appointments for the Premium (where you can get a passport on the same day) and Fast Track (a new document within seven days) services are released. This happens once a day (Monday-Friday), at a random time, and the slots are generally taken within minutes"
"Just hit ‘follow’, switch on notifications (and keep your phone close and on loud) to receive a once-daily alert when appointments for the Premium or Fast Track services are released by the Passport Office. Then head to the Government’s website, be quick and have your payment details ready; these slots can vanish in moments."

And no, it wasn't a problem pre-Brexit.

It IS disorganised not to check you have valid passports until a week before you travel…

I think it’s a bit OTT to be offended by that

There have been SO many news stories and threads like this, I find it almost unbelievable that people are STILL being caught out

I wouldn’t risk it OP. My experience was with Ryanair, staff immediately picked up on the fact that my son’s passport had less than 3 month’s remaining. Luckily we were still able to travel as we were on our way home to the country where we have permanent residency (but not citizenship so no second passport) - that overrode the 3 month rule thank goodness.

I always thought it had to be six months (before Brexit) so needing excess time on your passport is not a new thing surely?

I always thought you needed 6 months on your passport to travel brexit or not.

Is it not to do with the maximum legally allowed holiday visas? (so even if your planning on going for less time it has to cover the entire time you COULD be there).

But you were wrong to think you needed 6 months for Europe as prior to Brexit you could travel up until it expired.

Since Brexit you need 3 months remaining plus your passport has to be under 10 years old on the day you travel there.

How stressful OP 😩 Can you move your holiday dates and apply for his passport renewal?

Some countries specify 6 months. EU requires 3 months remaining. Prior to brexit you didn't need any months remaining for EU travel