UK Passport Renewal From Abroad

[jake]

This may be of interest to anyone living in the Philippines or abroad, who has a British passport.

My passport and the kids were due for renewal next year and, as we plan to travel abroad around New Year time, I decided to apply early due to the delays I had read about online. The website states your application will take at least 8 weeks, so I wasn’t expecting them to be returned before the time stated.

The online application was fairly straightforward and the total cost including the fee for returning the passport and any other documents was £102.86 per passport. When I was about to print the reference number of the last application the laptop and printer decided to throw a wobbly, so I ended up writing down the number. When I tried to log in later I realized the references was case sensitive Anyway, as it was Sunday night I had to wait till late Monday afternoon to phone the hotline. Spoke to lovely Irish women who sorted it all out and emailed me the details. Thank you!

Ended up sending the applications on June 11. You have to pay the postage costs, which was 3,400 in our case. Up to 6 passports with individual applications can be sent at the same time, which is handy if your passports are ready for renewal around the same time.

Today June 30th I got a bit of a shock when Mr DHL appeared at the door with our new passports. In the end it took 19 days. The remaining time on the old passport up to 9 months was added to the new, so all in all I am chuffed with the service we received from Her Majesty’s passport office

[raynaputi]

Great news! Something positive from the passport office at last!

[Steve.r]

Result

[fred]

Sounds good Jake.. What original docs did you send for the kids PP`s? Thats my biggest worry.
Did you need any counter sigs? If so who signed them for you?
also I thought you reported once that PP renewals from abroad had gone down to 50 quid?
Cheers
fred.

[jake]

Cheers Rayna and Steve

[jake]

Sounds good Jake.. What original docs did you send for the kids PP`s? Thats my biggest worry.
Did you need any counter sigs? If so who signed them for you?
also I thought you reported once that PP renewals from abroad had gone down to 50 quid?
Cheers
fred.

The kids are over 16, so they were applying for adult passports for the first time. We all sent our old passports, 2 pictures and one colour photocopy of proof of residency within the past year. I sent a copy of my ACR card and they sent their Uni ID’s.
As they are dual nationals we had to make a colour photocopy of their Philippine passport (every page including blank pages) as part of the application. Cost a blinking fortune!

No need to worry about counter signatures, as it’s not a requirement.

The application itself is £82 and the postage around £19. It used to be around £125 until last year.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

[fred]

Thanks Jake..It says on the application that they want original birth certs.. Did you send them?
I thought that a counter sig would be mandatory because of the differences in their old kids PP compared with new pics..
Thanks for info BTW!

[jake]

Fred, I never sent the original or copies of their birth certificates. That is only a requirement if you are applying for your first passport, whether it is for a child or adult. Took me a while to get that one!

The kids' passports are only valid for 5 years, so even though they look older you can easily tell it’s the same person. So, I didn’t bother having some VIP person countersign them for us.

When I started to read about applying from abroad the one thing I noticed repeated time and time again, was make sure 2 pictures were the correct size.

YW!