MPs have been told that it is now having to spend nearly a £1m in a month on overtime as it attempts to deal with the chaos of 490,000 outstanding applications.
Detailed Passport Office figures also confirm that the closure of overseas passport posts has caused a significant increase in applications this year.
They show that overseas applications have risen by 40,000 a month compared with a year ago, while those from applicants in Britain are only 20,000 higher than a year ago.
"Over the last 10 days HM Passport Office has been gripped by what can only be described as chaos resulting in emergency measures being taken by the government. It appears the Passport Office is making a surplus of £13 on each application. It should not be profiting from the public's hardship," said Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee.
The figures provided to the select committee show that the surge in extra passport applications seen this year first became apparent as long ago as January when 70,000 more were received than in the same month a year earlier.
The detailed data from Paul Pugh, the Passport Office chief executive, was received by the select committee six minutes after a noon deadline on Friday which had been set by the chairman, Keith Vaz, when the figures were not produced at a hearing on Tuesday.
The figures show that the extra demand for passports reached 727,067 applications last month – 57,000 higher than the year before. The largest part of the increase involves the renewal of 399,000 adult passports, normally the most straightforward to be processed.
The detailed figures show that 42,397 applications for British passports were received from overseas in May compared with only 4,662 in May 2013. Overseas applications have been running at around 40,000 a month more than last year.
The latest published figure for the average cost of processing a passport application gives a 2012/13 figure of £59.40 per passport. A standard adult passport costs £72.50 so the Passport Office is making a £13 surplus on each passport issued.
The new figures show that the monthly overtime bill for the Passport Office reached a record £964,742 in May – nearly double the £581,587 paid out in May 2013. The overtime bill has climbed steadily month by month since January as passport chiefs have tried to get to grips with the crisis.
MPs were also keen to clarify David Cameron's claim that passports were being issued within the normal three-week limit for more than 90% of "straightforward" applications. But the Passport Office were unable to provide details on Friday, saying "Data to follow" in an answer to their questions.
Vaz said the £13 surplus made on issuing each passport should be used to employ more staff rather than paying out nearly £1m in overtime to process the backlog quicker.
"The figures we received today reveal that the closure of the overseas posts has caused a significant increase in applications. This decision was clearly the wrong one and has been poorly managed. The public have been badly let down."
He said the 70,000 surge in applications in January should have provided "the wakeup call" and it was baffling as to why immediate action was not taken to avert the "impending disaster" that has engulfed the passport agency.
The Passport Office chief executive told MPs on Tuesday that they had anticipated the increase in overseas applications in their plans and blamed the unexpected surge on "a significant shift in the pattern of seasonality of applications from customers".
The Home Office also insists that a comparison between 2013 and 2014 application figures can be misleading. They say that transfer of overseas applications to British offices was factored into their forecast. They say that only 6% of the unexpected surge in applications relates to demand from overseas with the remaining 94% from applicants in Britain.
Original Article
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Alan Travis
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