Durham passport office staff morale 'at all-time low', says MP

Around 9.5m British passport applications will be made this year

Morale at Durham's passport office is at an "all-time low" with workers "too afraid" to speak out amid a backlog in applications, an MP has claimed.

Labour's Mary Kelly Foy said whistleblowers blamed the slowdown on "widespread mismanagement" and claimed "toxic" working cultures had emerged.

Some holidaymakers have reported that delays have left them unable to travel.

HM Passport Office (HMPO) said 98.5% of requests were completed within 10 weeks and staff were "working tirelessly".

About nine-and-a-half million British passport applications will be made this year compared to approximately seven million before Covid, according to HMPO.

Ms Foy, who represents City of Durham, said civil servants were "under immense pressure" as a result of the government's "failure to prepare" for demand.

"There appears to be widespread mismanagement and structural issues that are slowing the attempts to clear the backlog," she told the Commons.

Mary Kelly Foy MP says she was refused a visit to the office in her constituency

Recruitment delays, incorrect advice given by the outsourced helpline staff and inefficiencies from private contractors have all been blamed.

Ms Foy also claimed she was refused a visit to the office, which is a major employer in her constituency.

"Staff are subject to verbal abuse from the public and have shockingly witnessed an attempt to self-harm by an applicant desperate to receive their passport," she said.

"Tragically, one member of staff's mental wellbeing was impacted so severely that they told me they had contemplated suicide."

'Surge in passports'

Labour failed in a bid to censure Home Office minister Kevin Foster and force him to apologise, with a motion rejected by 295 votes to 198.

He accused the opposition of trying to "have a pop" at him because it had "no alternative".

Durham's passport office is one of seven customer service centres in the UK

Mike Jones, from the Public and Commercial Services Union, called it "unprecedented demand".

"The government was well aware that there would be a surge in passports this year and they have not put the resources in to make sure that recruitment took place early enough so that we had people in at the beginning of the year trained up and able to deal with this influx."

HMPO previously said it had been advising people since April 2021 to allow up to 10 weeks when applying for a passport.

A spokesperson told the BBC: "Our staff in Durham are rightly focused on working tirelessly to resolve applications as quickly as possible, this is our utmost priority."

It added that coordinating a visit for an MP would "divert vital resource from this work" and staff were processing approximately 250,000 applications each week.