Parliamentary Correspondence Unit 2nd Floor, Peel, NE SW1P 4DF

Email [email protected] Website www.gov.uk/hm-passport-office

Name: Anne Keenan Email: [email protected]

Reference: FOICR 36944/15

Date: 26 October 2015

Dear Mrs Keenan

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Thank you for your e-mail of 25 September, in which you ask for information on the number of passport applications where applicants had failed to enclose photographs. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I am able to disclose some of the information that you have requested, as set out in the enclosed Annex.

In keeping with the Freedom of Information Act, we assume that all information can be released to the public unless it is exempt. In line with normal practice we are therefore releasing the information which you requested via the www.gov.uk website.

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting a complaint within two months to the address below, quoting reference FOICR 36944/15. If you ask for an internal review, it would be helpful if you could say why you are dissatisfied with the response.

Information Rights Team Fourth Floor, Peel Building 2 Marsham Street London SW1P 4DF e-mail: [email protected]

As part of any internal review the Department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. If you

Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 Email us at [email protected] Visit our website at www.gov.uk remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you would have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Yours sincerely

Denise Hjiej-Andaloussi Parliamentary Correspondence Unit

Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 Email us at [email protected] Visit our website at www.gov.uk

Annex

Freedom of Information request reference FOICR 36944/15 Anne Keenan

Your request and Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HM Passport Office) reply are below:

Under the Freedom of Information Act I would like you to tell me exactly how many passport applications have been held up by the office because applicants failed to enclose photographs between January 2014 and today 25th September 2015. Resulting in a letter being sent out to the applicant requesting two further photographs are sent.

In January 2015 HM Passport Office changed the way that data is recorded so it is possible to provide the information requested from January 2015 but not prior to this date. The table below gives the number of times that Glasgow office has written to applicants because they failed to enclose photographs with their application from January 2015 to September 2015.

The data you requested from January 2014 to December 2014 is not held in readily available data form by HM Passport Office.

Under section 12 (1) of the Act, HM Passport Office is not obliged to comply with an information request where to do so would exceed the cost limit.

We hold the information which you have requested but we have estimated that the cost of meeting your request would exceed the cost limit of £600 specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. We are therefore unable to comply with it. HM Passport Office receives over five million passport applications every year and to provide you with the information requested would take a team of staff to manually collate the data requested by examining each application.

Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 Email us at [email protected] Visit our website at www.gov.uk

The £600 limit is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 24 hours of work per request. The cost of locating, retrieving and extracting information can be included in the costs for these purposes. The costs do not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure, overheads such as heating or lighting, or items such as photocopying or postage.

We are unable to advise you how to refine your request to fall within the cost limit. Please note that if you simply break your request down into a series of similar smaller requests, we might still decline to answer it if the total cost exceeds £600.

Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 Email us at [email protected] Visit our website at www.gov.uk