London Evening Standard
Secret plans are being made to close part of the London Passport Office over summer in a bid to clear up the massive backlog, the Standard has learned.
Home Office officials want to shut 20 interview rooms where people must go for face-to-face checks when applying for a first passport. It could mean thousands of Londoners being forced to travel to offices at Maidstone or even Peterborough for their compulsory half-hour interview.
The aim is to free up more staff to deal with passport renewals for holidaymakers and business travellers, which are seen as a higher political priority, say sources inside the Home Office. But the emergency plan was condemned as a panic measure by Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper.
“This shambles just gets worse,” she said. “Londoners face their passport office being shut just when they need it most. The Home Secretary Theresa May was warned about an increased demand for passports a year ago and did nothing. She was warned about a rise in complaints months ago and did nothing. Now we learn she is partly shutting passport offices to the public.”
Thousands of Britons fear they will have to cancel holidays because of a 500,000-strong backlog.
David Cameron admitted 30,000 applications had been delayed for more than three weeks and May promised urgent measures to speed them up. A Home Office insider told the Standard the plan was put to staff by managers. “Anyone who’d normally attend a London office interview would have to go to an outlying office, such as Maidstone,” said the source.
The Public and Commercial Services Union said the plan proved the Home Office had cut staff too deeply.
A spokesman added: “This is just a further example of the kind of measure they are having to rely on because of a chronic shortage of workers.”
Meanwhile, a new leak has given a first glimpse into the scale of the problem awaiting the staff who have been drafted in. Employees at the Passport Office in Liverpool, one of seven centres in Britain, were told that passport workers were processing first-time applications for passports from overseas dating back to March 31.
The applications for renewals of UK passports from people living overseas that were opened this week date back to April 29. The delay in opening applications for renewals from UK residents dated back only to May 21. Staff have been working through the backlog in chronological order, oldest first.
The same staff were also told that Hong Kong applications have been given their own category, and are, according to a source, suffering particularly long delays. On Tuesday, staff had begun examining applications from the former British territory which date from April 23. There are an estimated 3.5mn British or British National (Overseas) passport holders in Hong Kong, according to consular officials. The Passport Office has ordered an inquiry into photographs leaked to the Guardian which showed hundreds of files full of passport applications stacked in a room usually used for meetings.