Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 28
28
Accepted
The Department and HMPO asserted multiple times that they were learning lessons from their experience...
Recommendation
The Department and HMPO asserted multiple times that they were learning lessons from their experience in 2022 to avoid similar problems in 2023 and beyond, including conducting internal reviews.51 However, HMPO has experienced similar issues in the 42 Qq 99–100 43 Letter from Sir Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, to Dame Meg Hillier, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, 18 January 2023 44 C&AG’s Report paras 4.1, 4.3 45 Q 96 46 Q 138 47 Qq 63–64 48 Q 65; Letter from Sir Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, to Dame Meg Hillier, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, 18 January 2023 49 Qq 30, 65 50 Qq 139–146 51 Qq 29, 50, 92, 94, 98 16 Investigation into the UK Passport Office past. In both 1999 and 2014, HMPO struggled to process passports in line with demand, contributing to significant delays for customers. The previous Committee of Public Accounts examined delays to passport applications in 1999 and found that during the summer of 1999, many members of the public encountered great difficulty in obtaining passports. By June 1999 around 565,000 applications were awaiting processing, equivalent to a backlog of over a month’s work. The origin of the crisis was the introduction in late 1998 of a new computerised system for processing passports, involving substantial changes in working methods, which the United Kingdom Passport Agency (then responsible for issuing passports) assumed could be implemented over a few months without detriment to services. Customers experienced similar issues in contacting the Agency to find out what was happening and when they were likely to get their passports, and between the beginning of March and the end of June 1999, there were around 3.5 million unsuccessful attempts to get through to the Agency by telephone. As a result of the crisis, the Agency received around 5,000 valid claims for compensation, including 510 in respect of missed travel dates. For the calendar year 1999, compensation paid t
Government Response Summary
The government agreed with the Committee’s recommendation. It said that it is fully resourced, and that following workflow improvements, any application transferred to AMS is now brought to the correct place in the queue to begin processing. It also said that these issues experienced in the early part of last year are fully resolved.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
1.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 24 Recommendation implemented 1.2 The transfer of passport applications between systems should not have caused applications to fail to be processed within the published processing time. However, the workflow process through to spring 2023 meant that some cases were not being brought to the front of the queue when transferred to the legacy Application Management System, AMS, and the cumulative timeframe across the systems did result in applications taking longer than the published timeframe. 1.3 While the impact of this upon customers was mitigated by the expedited service that ensured applications which had taken longer than ten weeks were prioritised to meet travel needs, this did mean that some people did not receive the service that they should rightfully expect. 1.4 In addition, challenges with recruitment meant that His Majesty’s Passport Office (HM Passport Office) did not have the expected resources at the beginning of 2022. Priority issues led to large numbers of staff being recruited across the Civil Service. This, coupled with a buoyant job market, meant that bringing in staff for passport processing was approximately ten weeks later than planned, and this did limit processing capacity for a period. 1.5 These issues experienced in the early part of last year are fully resolved. HM Passport Office entered 2023 fully resourced and, following workflow improvements that were introduced last spring, any application that is transferred to AMS is now brought to the correct place in the queue to begin processing. 1.6 Passport demand continues to be elevated, with approximately 400,000 more passport applications between January and April 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. However, in response to the actions taken, HM Passport Office is performing very strongly, with 99.5% of applications over this period being processed within ten weeks, and 93.5% within three weeks.