Holidaymakers made to wait for passports claim £850k compensation – at the expense of taxpayers

Taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for a surge in Passport Office compensation payouts after complaints soared.

The agency was forced to pay out more than £850,000 in compensation between 2019 and the end of last year, figures show.

Over the period, complaints which resulted in payouts more than doubled from around 2,000 to 4,200.

Last year alone resulted in compensation payments to disgruntled passport applicants reaching more than £1,000 per day, with payouts averaging close to £120 over the five-year period, freedom of information figures revealed.

The Passport Office has been under intense scrutiny as it has grappled with a surge in enquiries from people keen to travel abroad again after the Covid restrictions were lifted.

People applying for a passport in the peak summer months were warned of long administrative delays before their documents would be processed. Some people were forced to go for the Passport Office’s premium services, which cost more money, so they could jump the queue and keep their holiday plans on track.

It coincided with strike action that resulted in thousands of Passport Office staff walking out in a dispute over pay and conditions.

Chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, John O’Connell, said: “Taxpayers are tired of being asked to clean up the mess made by crumbling quangos.

“While the Passport Office has been a success story in recent months, its failures prior to recovery have left taxpayers on the hook for vast compensation payouts.

“This should be a wake-up call to politicians about the need to get a grip on the many bodies delivering important services but outside of political accountability.”

The Passport Office will pay compensation to people if it accepts responsibility for undue delays in dealing with applications or mixing up documents or losing vital paperwork.

Last year it paid out £396,126 in compensation, more than the previous three years combined, to a total of 4,219 people who had made complaints about how their passport application was handled.

A standard online passport application costs £88.50, with the current waiting time estimated to be around three weeks, although at peak times in recent years this has been as long as 10 weeks.

Those people desperate to beat the queues could opt for a one-week service which costs £166.50 or the express one-day service at £207.50.

There were four million passport applications in 2020 and close to five million in 2021. This jumped to around eight million in 2022 and 2023.

A Home Office spokesman said: “His Majesty’s Passport Office continues to deliver exceptional service to British nationals.

“This data is not an indication of poor performance. The volume of payments represent just 0.05pc of the almost eight million passport applications that were received, and include refunds and reimbursements, not compensation alone.”