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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.
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.