5

Ten years ago, when I renewed my passport, the residual ten months from the preceding one was added on to the new one.
This year, the residual eight months from the 2014 passport was not added on to the new one. I e-mailed the passport office but did not receive a reply. (I am sure that everybody knows this but; anyway, a passport becomes next-to-useless in its last six months because too many countries will not accept it--why not; what difference does it make?)

Is there anything, legally, I can actually do about this?

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    The main reason is that the producer's are required to insure that chips functions for a period of at least 10 years. This lead to the ICAO recommendation of a validity period of 5 to 10 years. (Doc 9303 Part 2: Specifications for the Security of the Design, Manufacture and Issuance of MRTDs)
    – Mark Johnson
    Commented Aug 4 at 8:02
  • 4
    A lot (most?) of countries never issued passports with variable validity term in the first place. If your country did, this was an exotic practice that everyone else (border security agencies, airlines, etc...) had to deal with. The world tends to standardize on things like this.
    – fraxinus
    Commented Aug 4 at 15:55
  • 3
    @MarkJohnson Main reason for what? Limited validity and rules around validity on entry predate chips and biometric passports.
    – Relaxed
    Commented Aug 5 at 6:16
  • 5
    Tony, did it occur to you, by any chance, that maybe the country might, just might, be relevant to your question?
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 5 at 13:08
  • 7
    This question should be edited to have a title that gives an idea what's actually being asked instead of named for a very, very broad topic. Maybe "Recourse for lost residual validity time when renewing passport?"
    – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE
    Commented Aug 5 at 17:52

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
36

The UK Passport Office stopped adding extra months to passports on 10 September 2018. This was a well documented change in policy (see for example Types of British Passports). I don't know what legal mechanism you might be able to use to try to compel the government to resume its old policy, but I doubt it would be successful.

It's worth noting that the extra months of validity would also be of limited use in some countries, including the Schengen area and all of the EU except Ireland, because third-country passports must be no older than ten years at the time of entry.

Improve this answer
8
  • 6
    +1. It was the behaviour of the Schengen area which caused this change: they would not recognise the validity of passports issued more than 10 years earlier, even if the expiry date had not been reached. This led to UKPO changing its policy to reduce the number of cases of people thinking they could still use unexpired passports.
    – Henry
    Commented Aug 4 at 14:31
  • 2
    @Henry But it was only in 2021 (after the transition period ended) that this rule came into effect for UK citizens. See also 2019-11-23: ESTA with UK passport (valid > 10 years) - Travel Stack Exchange
    – Mark Johnson
    Commented Aug 4 at 17:17
  • 2
    @MarkJohnson - that is correct, though the Schengen Border Code with this ten year rule was decided in March 2016, and later realising the effect of that combined with expected Brexit (plus encouragement from ICAO) is what led UKPO to change its practice.
    – Henry
    Commented Aug 4 at 17:45
  • 2
    @MarkJohnson for the sake of completeness I would note that the effective date of this change was 18 October 2013, which explains why the consolidated version reflecting the change shows that date rather than the date of adoption of the amending regulation. This of course does not exclude the possibility that the existence of the ten-year rule was the first of two conditions leading to the passport office's change, the second being the result of the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
    – phoog
    Commented Aug 5 at 7:38
  • 2
    @phoog It should also not be excluded that automated software, such as ESTA applications, were having problems with these UK passports and lead to (or influenced) this change.
    – Mark Johnson
    Commented Aug 5 at 14:50
0

I'll try to answer this part of your question:

a passport becomes next-to-useless in its last six months because too many countries will not accept it--why not; what difference does it make?

Chase bank has a page, "What is the 6-month passport rule?" They list 24 countries that have this rule.

Countries are much more likely to announce what a rule is than to announce an explanation of why the rule was adopted. So I'll give my own opinion of why the rule exists. A traveler might arrive in a country and intend to stay only a few days. But something might happen that delays departure, such as a serious illness or falling in love. So the country being visited want's reasonable assurance that when the traveler is finally ready to leave, the passport will still be valid and the departure will be possible.

Improve this answer
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .