Asked by: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she proposes to take to improve the efficiency of the process of returning passports to applicants within the UK.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The exceptional demand for passports this year did result in some delays in returning supporting documents, including passports, to applicants.
Steps have been taken to ensure that customers receive their documents in a timely manner, these include increasing resources within the teams that are responsible for preparing the documents for return and improvements to overseas processes.
Asked by: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the cost of paying compensation for missing passports dispatched within the UK from her Department and departmental offices in 2013-14.
Answered by James Brokenshire
In 2013-14, Her Majesty's Passport Office paid £27.04 in compensation as a result of passports being sent to the incorrect address.
Asked by: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passports that her Department has returned to applicants in the last year have gone missing; and if she will estimate the annual cost to her Department of returning passports to applicants by (a) second-class post, (b) first-class post and (c) recorded delivery.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Since Her Majesty's Passport Office (HMPO) starting collecting this data in February 2014, 62 cases of passports wrongly delivered or packages damaged on delivery have been reported and investigated by HMPO and this has resulted in passports being cancelled. Subject to the outcome of the investigation, a new passport is issued to the passport holder. This is 0.0017% of the total passports issued for this period.
New passports are sent to customers by secure courier in the UK and overseas, any expired passports submitted with applications are returned to customers in the UK using second class post and overseas by secure courier which the customer pays for. In the 2013-14 financial year securely delivering new passports in the UK cost £17 million, overseas the cost was £6.25 million.
It is not possible to identify separately the cost of returning expired passports to customers in the UK.
Asked by: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of whether it would be cost-effective and secure to allow visa applicants within the UK the option of collecting documents from a designated office instead of relying on second class post.
Answered by James Brokenshire
UKVI is continually reviewing the customer contact arrangements to deliver best value and improved customer service. We use a combination of dispatch methods to send documents to our customers; the option selected in each case is determined by a number of factors including cost, the required speed of receipt, the monetary value, the need for evidence of delivery and the size of the package.
In the UK Biometric Residence Permits are generally returned by courier and documents deemed to be lower value of sensitivity by second class post.
A project is in train to enable overseas customers to collect Biometric Residence Permits from a number of regional locations on their return to the
UK. We will be reviewing the success of this project carefully to inform future decisions on methods of returning documents to our UK customers. A
decision on establishing arrangements for customers to collect documents from UK would need to take into account many factors including the cost of providing reception facilities and the logistics of how to arrange the collections for people who are not located close to the decision making office.