Recommendation 19

HMPO stockpiled passport books and worked with Thales to procure additional storage for these. Thales’s performance decreased in March and April 2022, with the percentage of items printed within 48 hours dropping from 100% in January and February 2022, to 85% and then 56% respectively. HMPO told us that this dip in performance was due to the surge in applications in early 2022, and that Thales recovered quickly. HMPO accepted responsibility for the issues faced by Thales, as it had informed the supplier to expect to process around 200,000 passports a week, when the actual number was closer to 250,000.31