His Majesty's Passport Office (HMPO) is an agency of the Home Office in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. It provides

passports A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...

for

British nationals British nationality law prescribes the conditions under which a person is recognised as being a national of the United Kingdom. The six different classes of British nationality each have varying degrees of civil and political rights, due to the ...

worldwide and was formed on 1 April 2006 as the Identity and Passport Service before being renamed HM Passport Office on 13 May 2013. The

General Register Office for England and Wales The General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) is the section of the United Kingdom HM Passport Office responsible for the civil registration of births (including stillbirths), adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in Englan ...

became a subsidiary of HMPO on 1 April 2008, and produces life event certificates such as birth, death, marriage and civil partnerships. HMPO's headquarters is co-located with the Home Office at

2 Marsham Street 2 Marsham Street is an office building on Marsham Street in the City of Westminster, London, and headquarters of the Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (and its predecessor bodies), departments of the British G ...

and it has seven regional offices around the UK, in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, Newport and

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

as well as an extensive nationwide interview office network as first time adult passport applicants may be required to attend an interview to verify their identity as a fraud prevention measure. Prior to the Queen’s death on 8 September 2022, the department was known as ''Her'' Majesty’s Passport Office and has since been amended to reflect the change of monarch.

History

Until April 1984, the Passport Office had been part of the

Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of fore ...

. Following the

Rayner review Derek George Rayner, Baron Rayner (30 March 1926 – 26 June 1998) was an English businessman, who was chairman and chief executive of Marks & Spencer, and revived and rapidly expanded the company in the 1980s. He began working for M&S in 1953 as ...

s, the Passport Office was transferred to the Home Office. In 1991, the service became an

executive agency An executive agency is a part of a government department that is treated as managerially and budgetarily separate, to carry out some part of the executive functions of the United Kingdom government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Nort ...

as the ''United Kingdom Passport Agency''. The Identity and Passport Service was established on 1 April 2006, following the passing of the

Identity Cards Act 2006 The Identity Cards Act 2006 (c. 15) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was repealed in 2011. It created national identity cards, a personal identification document and European Economic Area travel document, linked to a ...

which merged the UK Passport Service with the Home Office's Identity Cards programme to form a new

. In 2007, the ninety British diplomatic missions that issued passports were consolidated into seven regional passport processing centres (RPPCs) based in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

with an additional centre in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

. The Identity Documents Act 2010 repealed the Identity Cards Act 2006, and required the cancellation of all identity cards and the destruction of all data held. On 1 April 2011, responsibility for British passports issued overseas passed from the

to IPS. The printing of passports issued overseas had been done in the UK since August 2011 and the administrative work performed at these RPPCs was repatriated to the UK during the 2013–14

financial year A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...

. From April 2014, all British nationals based overseas had to apply for their passports directly to the UK. The Identity and Passport Service was renamed HM Passport Office on 13 May 2013 in an effort to reflect the agency's departure from its association with the scrapped

National Identity Register The Identity Cards Act 2006 (c. 15) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was repealed in 2011. It created national identity cards, a personal identification document and European Economic Area travel document, linked to a ...

and ID cards. The government stated in the press release that "The inclusion of 'Her Majesty's' in the title recognises that passports are the property of

the Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...

, bear the royal coat of arms and are issued under the

royal prerogative The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy, as belonging to the sovereign and which have become widely vested in th ...

. This means that the grant of a passport is a privilege, not a right, and may be withdrawn in some circumstances. HMPO's

status was removed on 1 October 2014 and it became a division within the Home Office. Its board reports directly to the Home Office's executive management board.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Home Office (United Kingdom) Defunct executive agencies of the United Kingdom government British passports 2006 establishments in the United Kingdom Government agencies established in 2006 Passport offices

History

See also

References

External links