A baby is in "limbo" waiting for his passport while his family prepare to take him on his first holiday.
Caeden from Kirkby had his passport application sent off, along with his three sisters' Freya, Poppy and Phoebe, and his mum Lauren but is still waiting to have his passport signed off despite his entire family having their passports ready to go. Lauren initially sent off the application to the Passport Office at the end of January, with the online portal updating on March 23 saying they had received Caeden's application.
The one-year-old is meant to be celebrating his holiday with his family as they go on two back-to-back holidays in Barcelona on May 9 followed by a rescheduled trip to Greece on May 19, with the little boy turning two on May 22. Lauren, and husband Daniel, are now worried they're going to miss out on £3,000 worth of holidays due to the Passport Office placing Caeden in a queue which is effectively "limbo" with no date on when they will get the passport through.
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Lauren told the ECHO about how she has now gone to both the Peterborough Passport Office, where her son's passport application has been sent and the Liverpool Passport Office in hope of being able to sort out the application. Despite their best efforts, the family have been on a knife-edge as they wait it out to see if the application can be pushed through in time for their getaways.
She said: "He doesn't really understand [what's happening] but people are saying just leave him at home when for one it's his birthday while we're away and I also would never leave one of my kids. I have three other kids that fully know we're going away, they're 11, eight and five.
"They know we're going on holiday. I can't let them down but I also can't leave the baby at home. I can't change the dates either because it's too close the flight tickets have been released now. It's either go and leave my son if we don't get this passport, which I'm not going to do, or just lose all that money for the sake of an application that's sat on someone's desk and just needs approving."
Lauren claims to have already spent just under £147 on the one application, with her paying to have documents posted and paying for the application itself.
A HM Passport Office spokesperson said: “Since April 2021, we have been advising people to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic. We urge people who need a new passport to apply for one as soon as possible, with the vast majority of all passport applications being dealt with well within 10 weeks.
“To deal with this demand, we have increased staff numbers by 500 since April 2021. This has helped us to handle more applications than ever before, with more than one million passport applications processed in March 2022.”
