UK passport backlog

[Spanky Longhorn]

They can be quite useful for ID.

A provisional driving licence is free isn't it?

 

[DotCommunist]

ennit, my old one is used for ID. Last time I travelled on it Heathrow gave me a bolloking because its dog chewed/been through the wash

 

[DotCommunist]

If you can't afford a passport probably couldn't afford to travel then, so why do you need a passport?

you can get a week in the sun for a couple of ton, the additional 60 quid might not be doable.

 

[tufty79]

A provisional driving licence is free isn't it?

No idea..
my driving licence is lost somewhere in the mists of Leeds and under my old name/address - can't afford to replace that either atm
And my passport expires in six weeks. Grr

 

[Treacle Toes]

I can't even afford a passport atm. I'm a prisoner in my own country. Everytime I try to leave a big white ball rolls menacingly into my path.

I have a passport but no money to travel at the moment, it sucks!

 

[Citizen66]

That's what credit cards are for!

 

[Dogsauce]

It'll get sorted because it'll be affecting a lot of middle-class people that Must Not Be Inconvenienced.

I'd put fairly good odds on the government pointing at the strikers and saying 'Their fault!'

 

[Puddy_Tat]

A provisional driving licence is free isn't it?

no. it's £ 50.

and while the identity checks are now done at 'application for first provisional licence' stage, a lot of organisations say they will only take a full not provisional licence as proof of identity.

 

[Quartz]

Fire top level of management for incompetence, threaten rest of management with decimation (Roman style, 1 in 10) if it isn't sorted within a fortnight. Job done. The management get the big bucks for the responsibility, and that cuts both ways. And if they thought the task wasn't possible given the resources, they should have resigned. The minister in charge should feel jolly lucky there's only just been a reshuffle.

 

[equationgirl]

It'll get sorted because it'll be affecting a lot of middle-class people that Must Not Be Inconvenienced.

I'd put fairly good odds on the government pointing at the strikers and saying 'Their fault!'

One of our managers got told today to go and sit in the Glasgow passport office to get his. It's affecting business travellers as well as the holidaymakers.

 

[butchersapron]

Fire top level of management for incompetence, threaten rest of management with decimation (Roman style, 1 in 10) if it isn't sorted within a fortnight. Job done. The management get the big bucks for the responsibility, and that cuts both ways. And if they thought the task wasn't possible given the resources, they should have resigned. The minister in charge should feel jolly lucky there's only just been a reshuffle.

No plan to deal with the speed up that a loss of 10% of staff means? No understanding of what telling the big bosses on the big bucks to sort it out pronto means for the ground floor operatives? Jesus christ. British management at his best - just shout at bosses to get them to shout at the workers.

 

[equationgirl]

A lot of the printing has been centralised in Manchester, so requests have to be sent there for printing, which adds a few days on to the turnaround time. Plus if you haven't paid for premium service then your passport is going to be in the slow queue.

Yelling at the managers isn't going to change that. Decentralising/sharing the printing back out to some of the regional centres will.

 

[Pickman's model]

They can be quite useful for ID.

and as personalised notebooks

 

[Pickman's model]

That's what credit cards are for!

 

[Quartz]

A lot of the printing has been centralised in Manchester, so requests have to be sent there for printing, which adds a few days on to the turnaround time.

This does not follow,.

Plus if you haven't paid for premium service then your passport is going to be in the slow queue.

Isn't that always the case these days?

Yelling at the managers isn't going to change that.

It should: it's their responsibility.

 

[William of Walworth]

no. it's £ 50.

and while the identity checks are now done at 'application for first provisional licence' stage, a lot of organisations say they will only take a full not provisional licence as proof of identity.

No kinds of DL are officially proof of identity, even if some bodies accept them in practice. Or so I'm told

 

[Pickman's model]

This does not follow,.



Isn't that always the case these days?



It should: it's their responsibility.

 

[William of Walworth]

One of our managers got told today to go and sit in the Glasgow passport office to get his. It's affecting business travellers as well as the holidaymakers.

Today, Monday 28th? Did he not have to cross a PCS picket line to do that?

 

[Pickman's model]

Today, Monday 28th? Did he not have to cross a PCS picket line to do that?

scabs fucking everywhere these days, even among management

 

[William of Walworth]

scabs fucking everywhere these days, even among management

 

[equationgirl]

Today, Monday 28th? Did he not have to cross a PCS picket line to do that?

Probably - none of our managers would give a shit about that.

 

[William of Walworth]

Probably - none of our managers would give a shit about that.

 

[equationgirl]

This does not follow,.



Isn't that always the case these days?



It should: it's their responsibility.

How doesn't it follow? If you only do printing in one place you have a bottleneck. If you have printing across multiple sites then if one is overloaded another can help.

They won't have factored in EVERYONE doing the premium service, which will make the slow queue a lot slower because all the premium passports are queue jumping.

Yelling at managers doesn't magic up a large number of replacement staff overnight, and even temps still have to learn the job.

 

[equationgirl]

Tell me about it.

 

[William of Walworth]

And that is what it's all about - the ridiculous slashing of staff numbers based on an annualised throughput, with no calculation made about peaks and troughs in demand. Any halfway rational minister (if such a beast exists) would have realised that such systems require some "slack" in staffing levels for exactly these reasons, but no, in their race to be "efficient, our coalition masters, like their new labour predecessors, show that what they are is inefficient.

I think this earlier point by VP ought to provide a bit of food for thought for Quartz : so-called "efficiency" drives, when they take the form of staff reductions**, so often result in much more inefficiency.

**And/or privatisation, etc etc etc.

 

[free spirit]

knew someone who couldn't go on holiday last week as they'd not received the passport they needed for their kid, despite applying for it weeks ago.

This is what happens when you cut vital services way passed the bone, based on application levels in a recession, without thinking about how many applications will be needed to be processed once out of the recession and the backlog of people who couldn't afford to go on holiday for several years suddenly have the money to go and all need their passports renewing at the same time.

Have I also understood it right that they've actually stopped UK embassies from processing passport applications abroad themselves, and centralised it all in a UK processing centre?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Fire top level of management for incompetence, threaten rest of management with decimation (Roman style, 1 in 10) if it isn't sorted within a fortnight. Job done. The management get the big bucks for the responsibility, and that cuts both ways. And if they thought the task wasn't possible given the resources, they should have resigned. The minister in charge should feel jolly lucky there's only just been a reshuffle.

if by "top level of management" you mean the politicians who told the civil service that they would be doing more work with less staff no matter what, and by "rest of management" you mean their special advisers who told them what a good idea this was, then I might think about agreeing with you...

 

[Puddy_Tat]

and why the heck isn't the labour party pointing out that david cameron said there would be no cuts to "front line services"?

(and for that matter why didn't they mention this while the DVLA local offices, the local tax offices, and so on have been trashed?)

 

[equationgirl]

knew someone who couldn't go on holiday last week as they'd not received the passport they needed for their kid, despite applying for it weeks ago.

This is what happens when you cut vital services way passed the bone, based on application levels in a recession, without thinking about how many applications will be needed to be processed once out of the recession and the backlog of people who couldn't afford to go on holiday for several years suddenly have the money to go and all need their passports renewing at the same time.

Have I also understood it right that they've actually stopped UK embassies from processing passport applications abroad themselves, and centralised it all in a UK processing centre?

Wouldn't surprise me - embassies are an expensive way of doing it though, at least twice as much as the passport service when I looked into doing it a few years back.

 

[free spirit]

Wouldn't surprise me - embassies are an expensive way of doing it though, at least twice as much as the passport service when I looked into doing it a few years back.

maybe, but it's always been one of the core services an embassy actually provided.

What's left, spying, schmoozing the rich and powerful, and hosting the odd garden party?