A dad who endured a five-month battle to renew his daughter's passport said people were in tears as they queued outside Liverpool Passport Office.
The dad, who did not want to be named, travelled to Liverpool from Lancaster to renew his six-year-old daughter's passport. He told the ECHO he had endured a five-month battle with the Passport Office which only came to an end because he was seen without an appointment.
The dad said the process of trying to sort the passport over the phone had been "abominable" and when he went to Liverpool Passport Office on July 6 it was "bedlam". The family's problems first arose last December, when the Passport Office rejected his daughter's renewal because a phone operator claimed the person who co-signed her photo did not exist.
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This was after the operator had already signed off his other daughter's passport the same day without any issue. The Passport Office attempted to send the old passport back but it got lost on the way.
In February, the family submitted a fresh application, without being refunded for the first. The dad claimed "hours upon hours were spent on the telephone speaking to people who appeared to have no clue on the status of my daughter's passport".
He added: "People were telling me things weren't updating on the system. It remained static in the system despite them receiving the lost reference number to progress the application.
"No matter how many times I was ranting and raving on the phone to people I got nowhere - every person would tell me something different. I expected delays but was not prepared for this."
After nearly two hours on the phone last week the application was fast tracked but he never heard back. As a last resort the dad decided to drive to Liverpool to try and be seen without an appointment.
The dad-of-two said: "As soon as I got there, there was a big queue. People had turned up from across the country. One man had driven from London despite living only 40-minutes away from the London office.
"Another couple told me they had left work in the morning from Birmingham without an appointment in the hope of getting back to their ailing family member in Pakistan. The woman was trying to hold back tears."
Staff gave people in the queue without appointments a ticket. The dad was eventually seen and within minutes his daughter's passport was printed. He told the ECHO : "My daughter's case was just one in many.
"The backlogs are huge but the staff inside the Passport Office looked stressed. They were all doing their best to those who had turned up and I appreciate the hard work they are doing.
"They're just trying to do their job but the system is broken."
A HMPO spokesperson said: “We apologise for the delay issuing this passport. The overwhelming majority of applications are completed within 10 weeks, with the latest figures showing 90% were completed within six weeks. But we cannot compromise security checks and people should apply with plenty of time prior to travelling.”
Have you had issues applying for a passport? Let us know in the comments section below.
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