How to get a passport in a hurry

Standing at the security check-in at the Passport Office in Peterborough, my hands felt suddenly clammy, despite having been made to wait outside in a chilly wind until my allotted appointment time. This moment had been a long time coming – but from eavesdropping on others in the queue I knew it could all yet go wrong.

‘I was here two weeks ago but I’d filled in something incorrectly on the form,’ said the woman in front of me to the staff member searching her bag. Meanwhile, the man behind flew into a panic when asked to show proof of an appointment booking on a mobile phone. ‘Oh hell, my wife booked this so everything’s on her phone,’ he told the security staff, only to be despatched back outside. No proof, no entry, despite the Passport Office having everyone’s details on a list. 

I was one of the lucky ones, ushered in at the first attempt. I waited nervously to be called to one of just three windows that were manned that day (my visit took place during last month’s strikes). Would I have made a mistake on the form despite forensically checking it? Or what if the powers-that-be spotted that the neighbour I’d asked to countersign my son’s application had inadvertently allowed ink to stray ever so slightly from the designated boxes (a total no-no according to the lengthy instructions)?

To my great relief, ten minutes after entering the building I was breezily heading back to the car park, having had the application accepted. That was on a Wednesday morning. The relief was greater still when, on the Friday morning that same week, my son’s passport was delivered to our door. Not bad considering I’d only managed to bag the appointment on the Monday.

As more and more of us try to get our documents ready for our summer breaks, passport renewal stress is mounting – not helped by holidaymakers belatedly realising that post-Brexit, many countries demand you have at least six months’ validity on your passport when you travel. There were more than seven million passport applications between January and September 2022, and 1.2 million of those requests came in the month of May alone. In January and February this year, more than 99.5 per cent of standard UK applications were processed within ten weeks, according to the Home Office. But for every anecdote about people applying via the standard routes and receiving their new passport on schedule, there seems to be a horror story about skin-of-your-teeth renewals.

While the Home Office usually advises allowing ‘up to ten weeks’ for an application to be processed, this rose to 13 weeks during the recent strike action – and after hearing one too many of those horror stories, I started fretting about getting my son’s passport renewed in time for our next trip. So when I read on the government website that fast-track face-to-face appointments were available, offering a passport in one week, I decided that was our best option, despite the inflated price tag of £126 for a child passport and £155 for an adult (vs £64 and £93 respectively for the standard postal applications).

But it quickly became clear that the real challenge was actually managing to book one of these fast-track slots. Every time I tried the website, I was met with a message along the lines of ‘There are currently no appointments available, check back later’. When I called the Passport Office helpline, I was told that appointments are released every day online, but at no specific time and on no specific schedule. If you’re lucky enough to log on at the right moment, it’s first come, first served. But if you’re not, they vanish – fast. ‘You’ll just have to keep refreshing the page!’ was the advice I was given. But who’s got time to spend all day doing that?

Frustrated, I began searching for tips on ‘how to get a fast-track passport appointment’ – and that’s when I stumbled across @ukpassportcheck. This Twitter account – full name Fast Track & Premium Passport Appointments – has more than 31,000 followers, and if I hadn’t become one of them I’d have faced much longer wait to renew my son’s passport. 

Operated by a data scientist called Dr Michael Hodge, @ukpassportcheck is a free alert service that tells you the moment these urgent passport appointments become available. Dr Hodge has invented a bot which refreshes the passport appointment booking website every 60 seconds, day and night, to check if any more slots have been released. If the bot notices that they have, it will send a tweet – and if you’ve followed @ukpassportcheck and activated notifications, you’ll immediately get an alert. Similarly, when all the appointments have gone, another alert will tell you that they’re now offline. And quite simply, it works.

Having followed the account and clicked to allow notifications, I missed the first few (blink and you will miss them) as I was busy with work. But then, on a Monday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk when my phone chimed with an alert – and I went straight to the appointment website.  

I was prepared to drive pretty much anywhere to get the passport renewed, so I was astonished to reach the front of the online queue 15 minutes later and find there were appointments in Peterborough – around 75 miles from my home, but still the closest and easiest Passport Office for me to get to. I clicked to book an appointment for 10.30 a.m. on the Wednesday – and we had the passport by the Friday.

Although my son’s new passport came at a cost, it was worth every penny not to be left pacing up and down the hallway every morning for ten (or 13) weeks wondering when it might eventually come through the letterbox. But who would have guessed I’d have Twitter to thank for it?