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UK Passport Renewal


Gardian

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Well, for once, a quite positive bit of news.

Our passports expire in 6 months time, so the renewal process needed to be started.  Our younger son who lives elsewhere in the EU was faced with the same situation and kicked off the online renewal in mid-December.

It was really totally painless.  We had our pics taken at a local professional photographer (for just €8 each, it just seemed better than the uncertainty of a photo booth) and she emailed them to us.  The online application was really straightforward and our ‘old’ passports were mailed back to the UK today.

Our son’s new passport arrived by courier this morning, so a 5 or 6 week turnround, but that includes Christmas / NY.  It all seems to work pretty well !

Forgive me if none of this is ‘news’ to all of you, but I rather thought that the online application process is quite new.

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Online service has been available for at least 5 years.  I applied for OH in 2018 and, like you, I was amazed at how well it worked.

I applied for mine last November, even though my passport was valid until December.  With all the talk of postal strikes and so on, I thought I'd do it a bit earlier.  In fact, it came back in a fortnight.

BTW, if you had a red EU passport, you could use it till the last day of expiry. 

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I stand corrected Mint.

Still, no harm in telling folk that it’s not as bad as the Press would have you believe.

I rather suspect that there’s a ‘specialist unit’ at Durham for expats (that’s where you have to send your ‘old’ passport back to) and the turnaround is a lot faster than for UK-based applicants.

Anyway, doesn’t matter really, as long as we get ours back in a reasonable period of time.

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You have forced me to translate “guardian” and google came up with “herdsman” which seems to be consistent with a name on a French forum. I had assumed, incorrectly, that it was exactly the same as guardian in meaning. I often make embarrassing mistakes due to my ignorance. I should have learned by now to be more careful.

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No need to be overly worried about mistakes Hectorsdad, we all make them?

You would know about the different French départements though, wouldn't you?  

 You could then hazard a guess that Gardian might live in the Gard.

The early forum had a smattering of people who called themselves using variations on the names of their départements or regions.

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No, no cajal, I never lived in 16.  I was Sweet 17 because that was my département, Charente Maritime.  Sweet was tongue in cheek, I was far from.

Betise, the one that always confused me a bit was Ron from the Aveyron.  Either he didn't live in Aveyron or he couldn't pronounce Aveyron.

Oh well, we were all new then, on the forum, in France.  I'd made many many errors in French some of which were hilarious but some were downright embarrassing😂

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Was it on this forum that a member was ronaveyron, or something close to that? I remember checking out his website with the intention of spending a few days in that area. It looked really good but I could not visit at that time and since then he seems to have vanished. His postings were always positive and supportive. Perhaps it was on another forum that has been lost.

It is entertaining just trying to workout how these names are created. 
Edit: What a coincidence that ronaveyron should emerge almost simultaneously. Just read the previous post after my posting.

Edited by Hectorsdad
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  • 2 weeks later...

My new passport was delivered yesterday - that’s precisely a 3 week turn round from my online application.  I reckon that’s excellent.

I would imagine that at other times of the year, it mightn’t be as quick as that, but they’re clearly ‘on the case’.

Mrs G’s application is running about a week behind mine, seemingly because her ‘old passport’ took that much longer to get to the UK, but no problem.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 8 months later...

We applied to renew our passports online from France using photos we'd taken on our phones 15 days ago. The new ones arrived today and we were kept informed throughout by email and text about progress. Compared to my 18 months to exchange a UK driving licence for a French one it was a brilliant service. 

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