6 2GM Thursday April 28 2022 | the times
News
The private company behind the Pass-
port Office’s contact centre has been
ordered to hire more staff to ease
“unacceptable” delays.
Teleperformance, the French-owned
multinational that is responsible for
call handling, has been “urgently
tasked to add additional staff” by the
Home Office, which is trying to avert a
summer of chaos.
On Tuesday Boris Johnson said he
would “privatise the arse off” the Pass-
port Office if it failed to improve its
performance.
Speaking in the Commons, Kevin
Foster, a Home Office minister, said:
“We recognise difficulties in contacting
the Passport Office will cause concern
for those wanting assurances about
their applications. In response the pro-
vider of the passport advice line, Tele-
The transport secretary has pledged to
digitise the Driver and Vehicle Licens-
ing Agency (DVLA) in an attempt to
clear a backlog of applications.
Grant Shapps said he would do
“whatever it takes” after millions of
drivers were affected by record delays,
resulting in some being unable to work
and going without their licences for
more than a year.
Last month, an undercover Times in-
vestigation found that hundreds of civil
Ben Clatworthy
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Cryptic clues page 10 of TimesShapps pledges a digital DVLA after millions hit by delays
to digitise and how can we do things
more efficiently.”
He told MPs that the backlog of
applications had fallen from a peak of
1.2 million to 400,000, but acknowl-
edged that more could be done and that
MPs’ mailbags were “too full of
correspondence” from constituents
complaining about delays.
“The answer is to digitise it and not
have to send bits of paper around,” he
said, adding that to have different
agencies such as the DVLA and DVSA
was “very confusing for most people”.DAVID PARRY/PAHire more staff, private company
behind passport call centre told
Ben Clatworthy
Transport Correspondent
performance, has been urgently tasked
to add additional staff as their current
performance is unacceptable.”
The Home Office has a five-year
£22.8 million contract with the com-
pany to provide “contact centre serv-
ices”, including a “passport advice ser-
vice for HM Passport Office”. The com-
pany has been the subject of repeated
complaints from frustrated applicants.
It is understood that Abi Tierney, the
head of the Passport Office, will call in
the chief executive of Teleperformance
this week to discuss the problems.
The Passport Office is in a race to
clear a huge backlog of passport appli-
cations after five million people did not
renew their travel documents during
the pandemic. Last month the agency
issued more than a million passports, a
13 per cent increase on the previous
record, Foster said.
Britons are being advised to leave at
least ten weeks to get a new passport,although MPs have said the target is
being repeatedly breached. Foster said
more than 500 staff had been recruited
at the Passport Office since last April,
with a further 700 in the process of
being hired.
Nine and a half million applications
are expected to be dealt with this year.
Covid restrictions led to only four mil-
lion being dealt with in 2020 and
five million last year.
Foster insisted that the agency did
not foresee a need to extend the advice
to leave ten weeks for a standard appli-
cation, adding: “We are making a range
of efforts — staff are working week-
ends, incentivised overtime — and cer-
tainly we’re confident we will not need
to change the ten-week target.”
He added that between January and
March, more than 90 per cent of appli-
cations were issued within six weeks.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home
secretary, said the increase in demandwas totally predictable, adding that the
Home Office was “in danger of becom-
ing a stay-at-Home-Office”.
She said: “The prime minister has
said the answer may be to privatise the
Passport Office, but why don’t Home
Office ministers just get a grip instead?”
The one-week fast-track service
crashed yesterday, and the online
premium service, which charges £177,
had no appointments available any-
where in the country.
It emerged that the backlog of appli-
cations had reached 700,000, with
more people applying daily for travel
documents. Tierney was accused of
largely working from home in Leices-
tershire, 100 miles from the Passport
Office headquarters in London, despite
a drive to get civil servants back to the
office.
A Home Office spokesman said that
it was “highly inappropriate” to ques-
tion where Tierney worked.servants at the government agency
have done no work while on full pay.
Motorists with medical conditions
have been the worst affected because
much of the process for obtaining a
licence is paper based. The Times
found crates of post, includinglicence application and renewal forms
and drivers’ documents such as pass-
ports.
Shapps said: “I ask myself why, in
today’s world, do we still need to have
60,000 pieces of paper arriving at
DVLA everyday. What is it we still needAn undercover
Times investigation
found hundreds of
civil servants at the
agency have done
no work on full pay