Passports boss ‘must return to HQ’ as 10-week wait threatens holiday chaos
THE boss of the Passport Office was under pressure last night to return to work full-time at its headquarters as it emerged there were 700,000 outstanding applications to clear.
The crisis has already forced the cancellation of family holidays and threatens to wreck the summer vacation plans for tens of thousands of travellers.
Boris Johnson has vowed to “privatise the a---” out of the government agency if the 10-week wait for new passports is not reduced in time for summer.
The agency’s website states that Abi Tierney, 48, its director-general, lives in Leicestershire, 100 miles from HM Passport Office’s headquarters in London, and the journey takes about three hours either by car or public transport.
Frustrated travellers have complained of being left on hold for hours and then told by customer services staff working from home that they do not have access to files to give updates on applications.
A Home Office spokesman said it was “highly inappropriate” to question where Ms Tierney was based, while another official said it was “ludicrous” to suggest she needed to be in London to do her job.
Sources said she spent the vast majority of her time working at Passport Office locations around the country including London.
One resident in Ms Tierney’s village in Leicestershire, who declined to be named, claimed she worked remotely from home “and rarely goes into work” although yesterday Ms Tierney was at the Passport Office’s headquarters in Pimlico in central London as the crisis threatened to engulf the organisation.
Mr Johnson has reportedly gone on the offensive against the “post-covid mañana culture”, which he claims has crept into the public sector and at the same Cabinet meeting threatened to privatise the Passport Office because of delays.
Jacob Rees-mogg, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of government efficiency, has warned senior civil servants to return to their offices and has even resorted to leaving notes on empty desks that state: “Sorry you were out when I visited.”
About 300,000 applications are being held up by delays in uploading documents after the contract for dealing with them was handed to a French firm.
Staff say the applications cannot be processed until the accompanying documents have been scanned and
uploaded by the Paris-based firm Sopra Steria to the Passport Office’s computer system.
Officials admit the process is taking eight days, four times longer than normal, although they are uploading 90,000 a day.
“That’s one of the reasons things are taking longer,” said a source. A further 400,000 are currently being processed with officials saying they can do 250,000 a week.
The delays have led to families being forced to cancel holidays, relatives missing funerals and workers missing important business engagements.
Applicants’ anger has been compounded by the failure of another French company running advice lines to respond to calls and give accurate information on the progress of their applications. Kevin Foster, the Home Office minister, admitted yesterday the handling of the calls by the Paris-based firm Teleperformance was “unacceptable”. It is understood company bosses have been hauled into the Home Office to be told to improve their performance.
Mohammad Reza, 54, a dual Britishiranian national, who was queuing yesterday at the Passport Office in London for the return of his son’s documents, said: “I got through to the customer service after four hours on hold.
“One of them told me they all work from home, that’s the reason why customer services have no access to the files. That’s the reason why they can’t give proper updates. It’s shocking. Why are they still at home?”
The Public and Commercial Services Union has blamed the delays on the inability to recruit sufficient permanent staff to meet the soaring demand for processing applications and an overreliance on untrained agency workers.
It claimed the Passport Office planned to recruit 1,700 new staff members to help deal with the increased demand but that only around 300 had been brought on board by the end of last year. The Home Office said it now had 500 with a further 700 being recruited by the end of May.
Ms Tierney was appointed directorgeneral of the Passport Office and director-general UK Visas and Immigration in March 2020.
Since her appointment to the £160,000-a-year post at the Passport Office, she has claimed almost £4,500 in expenses for 20 trips to London between March 2020 and July 2021, a 16-month period during which the Government advised employees to work from home unless absolutely necessary.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We have Passport Offices in a range of locations across the UK, with 90 per cent of our staff based outside London. It is therefore ludicrous to suggest that any senior leader not living there would impact on their ability to do their job to the highest standards.
“As part of the Government’s Levelling Up agenda, we are proud that we are spreading opportunities and leadership roles more evenly around the country and we will continue to do this – it is only right that we attract the best talent from across the UK.”
A Home Office official accused The Daily Telegraph of asking a “highly inappropriate question” over whether Ms Tierney was working predominantly from home. The official said the Home Office would not comment “on the personal circumstances of whether or not they [civil servants] are commuting into the office”. A second official said Ms Tierney did spend time in Leicestershire at her home as part of flexible working and that her job did not require her to be in the London office.
Staff processing secure passport applications did need to work at the Passport Office’s various locations around the country.
Ms Tierney’s role did not require her to be in the office at all times although the source insisted she worked from other sizable offices including in Peterborough, a much shorter distance from her home.
Mr Foster told MPS he was “confident” the 10-week target for passports would not be extended further, as the Government came under fire from MPS over its handling of applications.