Recommendation 7

We asked the Department how satisfied it was with HMPO’s performance in meeting customer expectations in the spring and summer of 2022. The Department asserted that, given the number of applications that had been processed, there were some things to be positive about, but that “clearly, there are some customers for whom we did not do a good enough job”.8 The Department and HMPO told us that while HMPO had predicted that there would be a surge in demand for passports in 2022, which included “a degree of seasonality”, it had not predicted or planned for the size of the spikes in demand that occurred. The Department told us that the higher than anticipated demand for passport applications in March, April, and May 2022 meant HMPO was “always running to catch up”, causing delays. The Department and HMPO also asserted that media coverage about customers’ negative experiences had exacerbated the spikes in demand, making the situation more difficult to manage.9