The last thing I want is to not have a valid passport, especially coming up to the summer holidays – but mine and my two children’s passports are currently stuck in my broken safe.
It’s going to cost me £100 plus VAT to prize it open with a locksmith, who thinks the batteries might have gone. By the time I get my hands on them, the cost to renew a British passport will have risen by £88.50 to £94.50 this week – that’s a seven per cent increase, and a rise of 25 per cent in two years.
I’ll replace mine using the Passport Office’s premium service (£222), because I don’t want to wait three weeks for a new one. Then, I’ll potentially need to shell out £189 each for my daughters – once I’ve checked over their current passports with a fine-tooth comb to establish, as best as I can, if they’re soon to be out of date.
You see, nothing is certain for UK passport holders these days. Even though the British passport is one of the most expensive in Europe, it no longer guarantees entry into another country. It’s like a VIP pass that’s been deactivated.
There is mass confusion with UK passport holders being turned away from boarding flights or deported on arrival, as they get caught out by changes to EU passport rules after Brexit. Which is what happened to my friend Arabella last Saturday.
The new 10-year rule for EU travel means your passport must have been issued less than 10 years before your entry date, and it must be valid for at least three months after your departure from the EU.
But most travellers still just check the expiry date and believe there’s plenty of time left. And why not? It sounds logical.
So when Arabella arrived at Stansted Airport to fly for a two-week Easter break in Majorca with her husband and three children (all under the age of 10) – with her passport that’s still valid until 15 November 2025 – she was not prepared for drama at 4.30am.
A lady at check-in told her while pointing at the issue date: “You can’t fly – your passport is more than 10 years, by a month.” In Arabella’s mind, she only needed three months on her passport to be able to travel.
It was her 40th birthday – and, instead of celebrating abroad, they all went home. She booked a one-day, premium in-person appointment in Peterborough, and waited for four hours to get her new passport. She booked five new flights, costing £1,200 – and flew that night with her new documents. At the departure gate, she overheard an official talking about another traveller: “Oh, we have another one with a passport issue date problem.”
When did “travelling while British” become such a palaver?
Of course, there are all the usual mishaps, such as lost and stolen passports. Horror stories abound. I had mine pinched from my bag in Prague. One of my daughters’ passports had the cover hanging off it and stained pages by the time we arrived in Dubai after her bottle of baby milk leaked all over it.
But when holidaymakers have had to cancel holidays or apply unnecessarily for a fast-track passport due to incorrect advice provided by the Passport Office about expiry dates for trips to the EU after Brexit – including a glitch in a government online passport checker that maintained kids’ passports ran out after five months – it’s a proper case of passport pandemonium.
One dad friend was a nervous wreck when his children’s new passports hadn’t arrived a week before his family holiday to Greece – after being given incorrect advice by the Passport Office. His wife blamed him for not using the fast-track service, and told him: “If they don’t arrive in time, I’m going to divorce you.”
It’s not just me – or my circle – having holidays ruined by passport mayhem. This week, The Independent revealed that a British tourist was wrongly deported from Norway in February after border officials at Oslo Airport made up a seemingly random new passport rule.
He was put on a plane back to the UK, with a notice saying he had been “expelled from Norway”. The officials had falsely claimed that passports expire after nine years and nine months. Such these incidents are happening all the time.
As I plan a holiday to Portugal this summer, my sole focus isn’t where we go or for how long – it’s whether the passports are still in date.
