Work from home passport boss rewarded in New Year honours

THE Passport Office boss who was criticised for working from home while she presided over a backlog of 700,000 applications has been given one of the highest awards in the New Year honours.

Abi Tierney, who partly worked from Leicestershire while the Passport Office headquarters in London struggled to cope, has been made a Companion of the Order of the Bath, the next-highest honour to a damehood.

The former director general for passports, visas and immigration at the Home Office was recognised “for public service” despite thousands of people’s holiday plans being ruined by the delays in issuing new passports in 2022. Ms Tierney was also responsible for processing asylum applications at a time when the backlog of claims topped 100,000.

It means the honours system risks criticism for rewarding someone who presided over what was described at the time as an “absolute shambles”, with other recipients also likely to raise eyebrows, including an official tasked with stopping small boats crossing the Channel.

Ms Tierney, who is now chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union after leaving her £160,000 government job, was one of many senior civil servants criticised for working partly from home while ministers were trying to get staff back to the office full time.

The then prime minister Boris Johnson became so frustrated by the delays at the Passport Office last year that he threatened to “privatise the a---” out of the agency at a Cabinet meeting.

In 2022 people applying for passports told The Daily Telegraph of their frustration at being told by customer service officials that they could not access their files because they were all working from home.

Ms Tierney’s responsibilities at the Home Office also included stopping small boats crossing the Channel and processing applications for asylum.

During an appearance before the Commons home affairs committee in 2022, she admitted that 96 per cent of asylum applications from arrivals in 2021 were still awaiting a decision.