About 550,000 people were waiting for their new passport at the end of June, as civil servants struggle with record numbers of applications.
MPs were told on Wednesday (July 20) that one in 10 applications exceeded the 10-week turnaround that the Passport Office advises people to allow for.
Thomas Greig, the Passport Office’s director of passports, citizenship and civil registration, said the service was dealing with an unprecedented level of demand after millions of people delayed renewing their passport during the pandemic.
Between 200,000 and 250,000 passports are currently being processed every week, he said, with five million processed already this year – more than the whole of last year.
The forecast is for the total to hit 9.5 million by the end of the year compared to an annual average of seven million.
He could not guarantee the three-week target for returning applications would be hit by the end of the year.
The backlog has reduced from April, when it stood at around 700,000.
Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, said MPs’ offices were being inundated with requests for help from people struggling to get their passport.
French multinational Teleperformance, which runs the Passport Office’s advice line, was criticised for failing to send a representative to be questioned.
Elsewhere, the BBC reported that people had to queue for hours in the heatwave on Monday to receive their documents at London’s Passport Office.
Staff handed out bottles of water to help people in the queue deal with the heat.
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