Post
by captam » Mon Jun 23, 2014 5:38 am
I have completed the appropriate Form RN for Renunciation of British Nationality and sent it the British Consulate in Hong Kong together with all the requested ORIGINAL documents and a credit card slip for the appropriate fee of GB 144 Pounds.
The form states a British Passport will "normally establish" proof of British status but if you do not have one, your birth certificate should be sent. Since my British Passport expired several months ago, I consider this to be an invalid document and it was ,in any case, not immediately available having been sent away for storage with other archived personal documents. I therefore enclosed an original birth certificate as requested.
More than one week later I received a call from the Consulate stating they needed the old passport for cancellation. When i responded that it was expired and no longer valid, why did it need to be cancelled? There was a long silence on the phone followed by later by "Oh we need to do something to it". I queried this and referred them to the Home Office guidelines which state that a birth certificate is adequate if a passport is not available.
However, not wishing to face a further delay, I spent a weekend retrieving my expired passport and took it to the British Consulate ( Home Affairs section) early the following week. They returned my original birth certificate & other documents submitted earlier and gave me an almost useless letter stating "to Whom it May Concern" that I had applied for Renunciation of British Nationality but this would not take effect until I had been issued with a "Declaration of Renunciation". This "declaration" is actually just a duplicate ( "Applicant's Copy") of the RN Form and stamped with a rubber stamp recording receipt of the application. I was then told this would have to be sent to U.K and would take "about four months". What ? Are they sending diplomatic mail by sailing ship once again? Why should I wait almost half a year ( from when I first submitted this documents) for them just to stamp a piece of paper?..... and at the same time take 144 Pounds from me?
This standard of service is just pathetic! When I hear stories of how it can now take this time for them to process and issue you a renewed passport, you think Good God why so long ! but now finding out it takes even longer for them to merely acknowledge that you don't want one of their crummy passports takes the stuffing.
