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Passports

Volume 457: debated on Wednesday 7 March 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) where he plans to situate his new passport application offices; and what the population is within 20 miles of each; (123630)

(2) how far away, in miles, from Grimsby the nearest passport application office will be following the planned opening of new offices.

The proposed locations for the 69 interview offices are included in the following list.

The passport interview network will provide an office within 15 minutes travelling time for just over half of the population of the UK and over 95 per cent. of the population will live within one hour's travelling of an office.

A small number of potential applicants, estimated to be less than 0.7 per cent. of first-time passport applicants (4,000 out of 600,000 per annum), live more than an hour's journey from an interview office. For this group we are putting in place secure video-conferencing links with the customer visiting a partner organisation, for example, local council premises. We currently plan to have remote interview facilities in 25 locations; however we are still consulting with regional stakeholders and are considering additional locations.

We have placed a document in the Library of the House of Commons setting out the planned network.

To provide an analysis of the population within a 20-mile radius of each of the 69 interview offices would incur a disproportionate cost. The interview office closest to Grimsby will be in Kingston-upon-Hull, a distance of approximately 33 miles.

Proposed locations for the 69 passport interview offices

Aberdeen

Dundee

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Inverness

Kilmarnock

Oban

Stirling

Wick

Berwick-upon-Tweed

Carlisle

Dumfries

Galashiels

Kendal

Middlesbrough

Newcastle

Northallerton

Armagh

Belfast

Coleraine

Omagh

Blackburn

Liverpool

Manchester

Wrexham

Hull

Leeds

Scarborough

Sheffield

York

Aberystwyth

Bristol

Cheltenham

Newport

Swansea

Swindon

Birmingham

Derby

Leicester

Northampton

Shrewsbury

Stoke-on-Trent

Warwick

Boston

Bury St. Edmunds

Ipswich

Kings Lynn

Lincoln

Norwich

Peterborough

Barnstaple

Camborne

Exeter

Plymouth

St Austell

Yeovil

Andover

Bournemouth

Newport IOW

Oxford

Portsmouth

Reading

Chelmsford

Crawley

Dover

Hastings

London

Luton

Maidstone