Will my passport arrive before my holiday?

Travellers say they are facing long delays to get passports to go abroad as officials face the pre-summer rush for new and renewal applications.

The Passport Office - which reports directly to the Home Office - is dealing with a large backlog after the number of people applying rocketed following the pandemic and Brexit.

Desperate applicants have been turning up at passport offices in the hope of guaranteeing they will have their documents before they travel.

The system is under pressure like never before. Officials say people should allow 10 weeks to renew a passport due to security checks.

The Passport Office said it could not provide up-to-date data for April but it claimed 90% of applications were processed within six weeks between January and March.

Travellers, though, say the target is being repeatedly breached with some waiting up to five months.

Others say they are waiting hours on hold to call centres before being cut off or told conflicting advice.

It has been reported some people who booked fast-track passport appointments are being sent hundreds of miles across the UK due to pressure on the online booking service.

Even when passports are approved and printed, many travellers say they are facing a long wait for the document to arrive because courier TNT UK, which has a £77m passport contract, has struggled to keep up with demand.

In the worse cases, holidaymakers have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket because their new passports failed to arrive in time.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research suggest the problems are set to cost UK holiday makers more than £1.1bn this summer in cancelled trips. A senior passport source has rejected that suggestion, describing them as "unverified, nonsensical and completely ridiculous".

The Passport Office says it has hired 500 additional members of staff with plans for 700 more after senior UK Government ministers described the system's current performance as "unacceptable".

The issues centre around the volume of applications coming through the system.

It is estimated five million people held off applying during the pandemic because travel was severely restricted. With Covid restrictions scrapped, the rush to renew is creating unprecedented delays.

The Passport Office says it managed to get through a million applications in March.

Post-Brexit travel rules are also catching people out.

When travelling to some EU countries, a passport must be valid for three months after the date you are set to leave the UK.

The second requirement is the passport cannot be used if 10 years has passed since its "issue date".

The advice is to check with your airline before leaving for the airport.

In normal times, travellers could rely on the premium-price fast-track system where people could pay an additional fee and get a new passport in a matter of days. Some people are still having success using this method.

Appointments for urgent services are released three weeks in advance, but, the online booking system is swamped. Passport officials told me these slots get "booked quickly" during busy periods.

If you use the usual, and cheaper, application route then you technically need to pass the 10-week mark before you can "escalate" your case.

The passport advice line should be able to step in and help.

Travel expert Simon Calder suggests contacting your MSP or MP to assist with raising the profile of your predicament.

A number of holidaymakers have taken matters in to their own hands by turning up at HM Passport Offices in a bid to plead with staff for their case to be heard in person.

The office in Glasgow had a queue of people due to fly in the next few days.

Your travel insurance will not cover you if you don't have a valid passport - regardless of who is to blame.

The Passport Office says it will compensate customers with a gesture of goodwill payment when it is "clearly at fault".

The UK Government website also states it will "reimburse customers for the entire cost of a holiday" if the trip was missed over failures to "meet a guaranteed Premium or Fast Track service".

Some travel companies will allow you to change the dates of your trip, but there is no cap on how much they charge.

Marion McDonald, from Drumchapel in Glasgow, was told by Jet2 she could rebook her £2,200 holiday for five to Salou in Spain if she pays a £750 admin fee by Thursday. She would then have to pay £1,000 to secure a trip in September.

Her family has been waiting since January for a first passport for her 14-year-old great-niece who has suffered several bereavements over the pandemic, including the loss of her father.

"My niece has never been on holiday before so we thought we would take her away," Mrs McDonald says from the queue outside Glasgow passport office.

"This is all about her, it's not about us. On the phone yesterday I got a call back [from the passport office] and the lady says, 'can you not go without her?'

"I said 'no, this is her holiday, it's to get her away because she's been through so much.'"

Mrs McDonald, who left her job in prison health care last year due to ill health, said the service from the passport office has been "absolutely shocking" and the stress it is causing her family is "horrific".

Her MP Carol Monaghan has offered to try to help, but the family still don't have any idea of when the passport might be ready, despite having fast-tracked the application two weeks ago.

They timed the trip, due to begin on Sunday, to help them recuperate after a memorial last week for her mother Eileen Honeyman, the first person in the Glasgow health board area to die with Covid.

"I've waited 16 weeks, I've got over 150 hours of telephone calls, I've sent emails every second day to every passport office upgrade team, I've even sent to the chief executive officer, I've sent a complaint in," she said. "I'm getting absolutely nowhere.

"I really need to speak to somebody from the examiner's team to find out why our child's passport is still sitting with an examiner 16 weeks down the line.

"Nobody can tell us when we're going to get it."