Recommendation 27

We asked HMPO what it had done in 2022 to attempt to persuade people to apply for their passports earlier to help manage the surge in demand. HMPO attempted to directly influence customers to apply for their passports earlier and told us that it sent more than 5 million text messages to people whose passports were due to expire. HMPO’s customer research, however, showed the impact of this was negligible, with just 3.4% of texts resulting in people taking any action.47 HMPO was unable to tell us how much it cost to send the texts, but the Department wrote to us after our evidence session to confirm that the cost per message was 1.72p plus VAT. We calculate that this equates to some £86,000 plus VAT.48 HMPO accepted that while it did run some advertising campaigns, it should have been more proactive in using social media, as that is where many of its customers receive their information. HMPO stated that it planned to focus its communication with customers on social media in the future.49 We also heard that HMPO wants to use surge teams across the Department to flexibly cope with spikes in demand, rather than relying on recruiting additional staff.50