“Rock-bottom morale” and “creaking” IT systems at the Passport Office threatens to extend a backlog of 500,000 applications, staff have reportedly warned in private.
The Times on Saturday said it had obtained a cache of 263 internal messages from officials in which staff claimed that their systems are struggling to cope and are not “fit for purpose”.
They raised concerns that the backlog is just the “beginning of a very lengthy scenario” and pressure will only become “heavier”.
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Passport Office staff also accused Teleperformance, which has a five-year £22.8 million contract to run the passport advice line, of giving customers “poor, misleading advice” and exacerbating public anger.
Appointments cannot be booked online for most services, and customers have reported being repeatedly cut off. The ten-week target to approve applications is being repeatedly breached, the newspaper reported.
The messages came from an internal call on staff morale and delays.
The processing system was a “big fail”, “deeply flawed” and “half-working,” staff said. One issue was that the new system automatically rejected applications after 97 days if the right documents were not uploaded in time.
Some staff on the call, where workers could anonymously ask questions, complained that their own relatives could not get passports. Staff said they were being treated like “peasants”.
The Home Office could not provide an updated figure on how many applications were waiting to be processed, but the most recent number was 500,000.
People had been “camped outside the office from the very early hours”. The pandemic meant five million people delayed renewing documents.
A Passport Office spokesperson said 250,000 passport applications were completed each week and the “overwhelming majority” were turned around within ten weeks. They said a new digitised system had sped up the process.
Commons leader Mark Spencer said last week that staff numbers at the Passport Office had increased by 500, with a further 700 arriving by the summer.
The Passport Office last month insisted it “prepared extensively” for the post-pandemic surge in demand for its services as it outlined a series of measures it has taken following reports of long delays in processing applications and renewals.
In an update on the government website, the Passport Office insisted the “vast majority” of applications were being dealt with well within a ten-week window which has been in place since April 2021.