@Pallykin That is a great summary of what is typically to be expected from the UK Home Office at the latter stages of the UKM / UK passport process.Pallykin wrote: ↑Sat Sep 09, 2023 1:05 amPeople like me who have applied from abroad had to send their application documents via courier to Liverpool. It is my understanding that they use DHL to return these documents. I'm hoping that I will receive an alert from my DHL account when they send my documents back. People have been caught out when their documents were returned without warning. In some cases, people learned the outcome of their application when they read the letter included with their documents.
The approval is supposed to come via email from home.office.atlas@notifications.service.gov.uk. You might want to add this email address to your contacts list to ensure the email doesn't end up in your spam folder. Sometimes the home office fails to send this email. It is sent a few days after your application is approved.
Some councils/consulates require that you bring the home office atlas email to your citizenship, so if you didn't receive it, you will need to chase it by emailing FurtherNationalityEnquiries@homeoffice.gov.uk
Sometimes people learn that their application has been approved when further nationality replies to an email providing additional information. This seems to be a matter of good timing and a kind caseworker.
The citizenship certificate is presented to you at your citizenship ceremony. It is sent by the home office either to your council if you are in the UK, or the consulate nearest you if your are abroad.
Once you have had your ceremony, make a scan or take a photo of your certificate, and then send it off with a colour photocopy of your passport (all pages) as the supporting documents for your first adult passport application. The passport process is much faster and more transparent than visa or citizenship applications.
The UK government has published statistics: 200,362 applications for citizenship were submitted in the year ending March 2023, an 11% increase over the year ending 2022.
Just one final question, when you registered with DHL, which coutnry DHL website did you register with ? was it the UK DHL website or the DHL website in the country in which you were located (e.g. France, Germany, U.S. etc ?) I'm only asking because I've had dealings before with DHL in mainland Europe and the Spanish DHL website and tracking process operated on a slightly different DHL website to say the German DHL website (which is where I was sent DHL packets from to Spain). Presumably you registered with them using the e-mail address, phone number (and of course) your home address that you originally provided the UK Home office with upon your initial application. And how did you get a notification from DHL that the papers were arriving ? was it e-mail, phone text message etc ?
That process took 59 days from application to receipt – approximately 2 months.
Note the long delay of around 4 months from “approval” to the ceremony date! I had discovered that the email invitation was sent only a week prior to the scheduled ceremony but they got my email address wrong! Luckily I contacted them in time and they resent the invitation to me! I suppose anything that can go wrong…. 
Note that I DID NOT send my original current and unexpired US passport, but made colour copies of every page (including the blank ones) and sent that instead. I did send my original expired US passport and my Mum's expired UK passport. All other reference documents were colour copies, which I had read could work, and thankfully it did! I didn't want to be without my US passport for 6-7 months! 
