A SCOTS mum is set to be left behind and miss a family wedding abroad after FOUR MONTHS delay to renew a passport – despite her MP raising her plight in parliament.
Teacher Emma Jane Newton sent her old passport off on February 20 well in advance of her niece’s wedding due to take place in Italy next week.
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But months on, there has been no sign of her new one – meaning she will have to remain at home on the Millport in Ayrshire, while her husband Jensen, 49, and her daughter Madison, 13, go ahead without her.
The 39-year-old told the Scottish Sun Online how she has chased the passport office nearly 10 times to track down her new passport and even had the missing application raised in parliament by her MP, Patricia Gibson.
It took until April for the mum-of-two to realise something wasn’t right after waiting two months with no response.
She called the passport office only to discover her passport had not only not arrived – but that she needed to report it lost for the application to proceed.
She said: “In April I phoned up and the girl I spoke to advised me I should register my passport as lost.
“And then I phoned back again to give her the lost passport number.
“I did all of that, and the girl said it was progressing and I would hear back.
“I phoned back two weeks later, but there was still absolute radio silence.
“I phoned again, and a different customer advisor told me that there wasn’t a record of a lost passport number on the account.
“So she updated it – and put the number back in the system.
“Then two weeks later, I called up as I still hadn’t heard anything.”
There were four failed attempts to input the details correctly – and Emma was getting told different things by different advisors each time.
She continued: “I phoned back again and honestly felt like asking if Jeremy Beadle was about.
“A different girl said to me – because obviously, you don’t get to speak to the same person twice – the lost passport number has been put in incorrectly.
“She put in the correct number and assured me it was all done and it was moving.
“I phoned back two weeks later because we hadn’t heard anything – but because it is now an automated service, I couldn’t get through to speak to anybody.”
Her niece’s wedding is due to take place next Wednesday and now it is a race against time to see if Emma can leave the country.
However, she has pre-emptively cancelled her accommodation as she was due to fly out to Florence from Glasgow airport this Saturday.
The first holiday for the family since 2019, has been reduced to just a handful of days around the wedding, if she can get to attend.
She added: “Jensen and Madison are still going as I don’t want them to miss the wedding. Madison already has her dress, as do I.
“It’s horrendous. The worst thing about it is that you can’t even speak to a human when you speak to them anymore.
“Back in April when I was already thinking this wasn’t right, it was taking a bit long, but when I was phoning I was actually getting to speak to a person.
“But as time has went on, it is now just automated, so when you phone up, you just put in your passport application number, and you get an automated message and they hang up on you.
“Patricia Gibson wrote to the parliamentary representative dealing with passports for me – but because of the volume of complaints at the moment, there was a 15-day working day wait on that.”
“I’ve had radio silence again, I’ve heard nothing – it is now the June 27 with a week to go. I don’t know what else to do.”
A HM Passport Office spokesperson said: “Staff are processing approximately 250,000 passport applications each week, and between March and May 98.5% of applications were completed within the published processing time of ten weeks.
“For the small percentage of customers whose applications take longer than ten weeks, there is an expedited service at no additional cost to help ensure that they receive their passport ahead of their travel.”
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