Press releases – Make a clean summer getaway: check your passport now

Press release

Make a clean summer getaway: check your passport now

Monday 12th June 2006

With only six weeks to go until the school holidays and the great summer holiday exodus, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is calling on all parents and other summer holidaymakers to check now that their passports are in order.

Every year people risk being unable to go on holiday because they arrive at ports and airports with passports which have expired. Last summer alone 106,000 people paid £48 extra for the same day passport renewal service because they had not left enough time for a standard renewal.

Home Office Minister Joan Ryan said:

“The school holiday period is always one of the busiest times of year for the Identity and Passport Service, with people having to make last minute applications to ensure they can get on the plane for their summer holiday. The advice to holidaymakers from IPS is to check now that they have their passports and that they are still valid, to avoid disappointment and to ensure they are not left grounded at the airport.”

Travelling abroad has become the norm for many people, but checking travel documents well in advance has fallen out of fashion. Research conducted for IPS found that:

17 per cent of people start looking for their passport just one day before a trip;
15 per cent start looking only a few hours before a trip;
7 per cent have had a last minute panic because they were going away and either didn´t have or couldn´t find their passport; and
3 per cent have left home for a trip abroad without their passport.

There are currently around 47 million British passports in circulation, with 80% of the population holding a passport - a massive increase from 24% in 1984. The Service is now handling unprecedented demand, with applications expected to rise to around 7 million this year. With the exception of the USA (8 million) this is more than any other country in the world.

At the same time as issuing record numbers of passports, IPS is delivering continued high levels of customer satisfaction - 97% against 95% of all customers surveyed are either ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the service. Last month IPS also topped the Comparisat customer satisfaction survey for the third year in a row, beating public and private sector organisations such as Amazon, eBay, Marks and Spencer and Tesco.

IPS is also reminding families planning to travel to the USA that under the US Visa Waiver rules, children must have their own machine-readable passport. Anyone without their own machine-readable passport, including children on a parental passport, will need a visa to travel to the US.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Identity and Passport Service was established as an Executive Agency of the Home Office on 1 April 2006. The IPS Mission statement is ‘safeguarding your identity’.
Machine Readable Passports contain two lines of letters, numbers and ´>´s printed at the bottom of the personal information page (page with photograph and personal details). The text will be on a white strip on older machine-readable passports and directly on the pink page of newer passports. If there are no lines of text, the passport is not machine-readable.
For media enquiries relating to IPS and passports, contact the Home Office Press Office on 020 7035 3535.
For information on the services that IPS provides and to find out more about the passport application process, please visit www.passport.gov.uk or call the Passport Adviceline on 0300 222 0000.

24-hour Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 (see terms and conditions). Calls made to 0300 numbers from landlines and mobile phones are charged to customers at their network provider's national rate. Live operators are available to assist with your enquiry 24 hours a day.