Passport renewal delays

DD and her family recently renewed their passports plus a new one for the 3 year old and it only took 3 weeks. Honestly the constant scaremongering is doing my head in!

nipsmum

My daughter has waited 6 months to renew her driving licence and is still waiting. My granddaughter also waited 5 months for a provisional driving licence. Now. She has to wait another 5 months for an appointment to sit her theory test and that's all before she can commece her driving lessons.

My husband recently renewed his driving licence because it was due to expire in a few months time and got the new one in about a week. He did it online, perhaps that makes a difference? I assume your daughter has checked that it hasn't got lost in the system or in the post?

A standard online driving licence renewal for the over 70's should go through okay, but beware if you have any medical conditions. DH applied mid June thinking that was enough time for September's car hire. As the weeks rolled by he had no acknowledgement that the application had even been received. Hanging on the phone for hours resulted in eventually being cut off. Online advice was that it was no use even asking until 10 weeks had gone by. At the beginning of August I contacted DVLA via Twitter, who gave me a different number to ring. Waiting till 6.30 pm as advised, that was eventually answered. DH was told that a letter was in the post to him, saying that there was no space for the vision test he would have to take in the near future. That took a further 5 days to arrive. But the lady he spoke to had said she would try and expedite things, and in the same post was a letter telling him he had to book an appointment with Specsavers within a week! We are living in hope...

My son applied for a new passport thinking it would take weeks. It was back within 10 days.

The last time we needed to renew passports we were staying not too far from Newport so decided despite the higher cost it was worth going in person - you need to be able to get there during the morning as you need an appointment to do the interview type bit and then go back four hours later to collect the passport. It does work but you pay quite heavily for doing that.

nipsmum

My daughter has waited 6 months to renew her driving licence and is still waiting. My granddaughter also waited 5 months for a provisional driving licence. Now. She has to wait another 5 months for an appointment to sit her theory test and that's all before she can commece her driving lessons.

You can have driving lessons before taking your theory test, however you can't take the practical test without having passed the theory test. Waiting for the theory test doesn't stop you getting on with having lessons.

@nipsmum why does your granddaughter have to wait 5 months to sit her theory test before starting her driving lessons? From what I understand you have the driving lessons, take the theory test and then have your driving test? Or have things changed (although in my day we didn't have a theory test - only lessons then the driving test)

There are supposedly delays with Driving Licences too so when I lost my old green one and had to apply for a photo one last March, I was expecting a long delay but I got it back in three weeks.

We renewed our passports online in May, for identification purposes really as we aren't planning a trip of any kind. Despite them not liking Mr P's photo & rejecting it both pports were received in about 10 days.

I applied this summer and got my passport back in 8 days.