Escalation chain for an extremely delayed passport by HMPO

TL;DR my wife applied for her first British passport on the 1st of April and, despite filling everything perfectly and correctly, has still not received it (3+ months). HMPO are saying they cannot even provide a wait time estimate. How do we escalate?

———

This is the full timeline of my wife's unfortunate adventures with HMPO:

• 1 April: Submitted her application for the first adult UK passport (she's a naturalised citizen, same for me)
• Late April: She received her passport with two typos in the observations section regarding a foreign passport she also holds. (The information she submitted was fully correct, but it was typed incorrectly into the observations section by HMPO.)
• Early May: on the advice of the HMPO support line, she filled in a separate paper application and submitted it alongside with a cover letter and all supporting documentation (her naturalisation certificate and foreign passport)
• 8 May: All documents received by HMPO according to postal tracking.
• 16 May: Her paper application was logged, and on the same day she received an email that complaint is logged and to expect an initial reply within 10 working days.
• 21 May: She received an additional email that her complaint is logged (under a different reference this time), and that it will take up to 20 working days.
• Throughout June: She contacted the support chat again and was told it will take up to 30 working days
• 3 July: 30 working days have passed and she contacted HMPO support again. They took her details and said someone will be in touch.
• 4 July: She got a call from HMPO, they acknowledged that the passport indeed contained two typos and that it had been already passed to a resolution team, but that team are "very behind" and so unable to provide an estimate.

Needless to say we are both very frustrated with this, completely unacceptable and definitely the worst experience we've had so far with any UK institution by a margin.

Do we have any way to escalate this? The only thing I can think about is writing to our MP, but perhaps there are other measures we can do instead of / in conjunction with writing to MP? Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

I assume you have been calling the helpline at 0300 222 0000. If you haven't tried this yet, try to ask to speak with a senior case worker/manager. Try to log all instances when you spoke to them, and what did they say, so you can share this paper trail with people as appropriate.

You have tried the complaint route too.

I think writing to your MP is a good idea. You could also write to the HO secretary.

contorted_svy wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 09, 2025 11:04 am

I assume you have been calling the helpline at 0300 222 0000

All interactions so far have been through the web chat option on HMPO website, so she has transcripts of everything. We'll try calling the helpline as well and try to get to a senior caseworker. And thank you for the pointer to Home Secretary! Will try all those options