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How disorganised holidaymakers threw away £14m last year

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
18/10/2016

A quarter of a million UK travellers collectively wasted £14m in 11 months shelling out for last minute passport renewals.

Figures, obtained by Airport Parking and Hotels (APH), revealed that HM Passport Office received 254,529 applications for its Premium one-day passport service between August 2015 and July 2016.

It usually costs £72.50 to renew or replace your passport, or £82.25 if you use the Post Office’s Passport Check and Send service, and you should receive your replacement within three weeks.

The Fast Track one-week service costs £103. But the Premium one-day passport service costs £55.50 on top of the standard renewal cost, taking the total to £128.

London was the most disorganised city with 42,376 emergency passport applications, followed by Glasgow (6,609), Belfast (5,698), Birmingham (5,212) and Liverpool (4,791). Redhill in Surrey was the most disorgniased town – 14.5% of the population applied for the fast turn-around service,

Beverley Barden, head of marketing at APH, said: “It’s shocking to see how much money is being wasted because of people being disorganised and not making sure their passports are kept up-to date.

“With many countries requiring that visitors must have at least six months’ validity left on their passport, anyone that might have to visit those places at short notice should make sure theirs has enough time for them to be able to use it.

“When booking holidays, it really should be a standard check for people to make sure their passports are valid.”