But I submitted my passport for renewal through the Post Office checking system on Monday, and have just received my shiny new passport today - five days later!
But I submitted my passport for renewal through the Post Office checking system on Monday, and have just received my shiny new passport today - five days later!
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Zak33 (27-09-2013)
As expected.. so no one normally comments on how well a system works. Only Q_Q when things go wrong and next thing you hear is that everyone knows how slow/badly managed "x" is..
Personally I've always thought that Gov services to the public were run fairly efficiently. Never had a bad experience renewing passports, applying for driving license, renewing tax disc, etc.
Fair point, although things like Tax disks and driving licences I would expect to be automated, while a passport mioght have a few manual checks - although as a renewal, maybe not so much.
There is a degree of expectation management on the form where they say that the minimum renewal time is three weeks - so anything under that is a bonus (or am I being a tad cynical?)![]()
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Cynical is a good thing
Was very impressed recently with the DBS(new name for CRB disclosures). Last time I had one done(2/3 years ago) it took about 2 months to come back, this time ... 4 days. Now if only they had awards for most improved goverment department, the DBS would get a vote from me.
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should being the operative word. I work in the NHS and very little that I've seen works as it should...and if i'm disillusioned on the inside of the system, I dread to think what the poor patients on the ward think of it from the outside
oh no, within a space of a few posts a good news story is turning on its head.
I know public servants who have been 'enjoying' a pay freeze for several years, have had their pensions decimated, their workload increased due to cuts and the expectation upon them also increased in terms of the complexity of their work, and yet they still consider it their duty to serve to the best of their ability.
Give 'em a break fellers. These are people who contribute to the backbone of our lifestyle and they are working, like others, under much duress in the current economic climate.
My Daughters 1st passport took 9 days, can't moan as it is out of season.
Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack
off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
Indeed - and it a sad reflection on the regard the Civil Service is held by many that there is a degree of cunicism.
The Civil Service has become politicised by both sides of the political divide, which unfairly draws into question their political impartiality.
However, elements of the Civil Service have also tended to destroy an image of professionalism by taking (in some cases, ill-considered) 'industrial action'.
The Civil Service also bears the brunt of poor decision making by their political masters (again, on both sides of the political divide).
The end result is that they get blamed from all sides because of the consequences of decisions outside their control.
So yes, I was pleased to experience first hand an efficient process!![]()
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Hang on a second.
Your saying that it's good value? How much did that thing cost? You can get very hard to forge IDs commissioned with RFIDs and Holograms for £50 as one offs. They only take 48 hours to turn round.
Last time I got my passport renewed, I needed it in a hurry to get a VISA so I used the same day service. I was told that I'd need my Birth Certificate and a whole bunch of other stuff that I collected some 400 mile round trip, to find I didn't need any of it. Even the photograph signed by someone I'd been told explicitly when I made my appointment I'd need. I didn't. I had only lived in London 18 months, so it was quite the effort to get a professional who had known me for 7 years.
I mean, sure they did it, and for a government department it was good.
But for any private company it was horrifically slow, inaccurate, expensive and a waste of my time.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
So they managed to print you out a crappy little book with your picture in and post it to you in five days, and only charged you 80-odd quid for the privilege.
There's me thinking it's a ludicrous rip-off, and I turn out to be completely wrong. If that's how good government services have got now, I say NATIONALISE EVERYTHING!!![]()
Ah, but you are forgetting all the background checks, and cross checking other records. Of course, for a fine upstanding citizen like myself, that would be minimal, but then I'm probably subsidising the checks on less 'desirable' characters. And there is all that biometric infrastructure to pay for - so it isn't just the cost of the book.
And all for just 60p/month or just 2p a day!
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3180 staff. Quite a lot of them. Trouble is most are probably working hard but in an unbelievably bureaucratic manner.
And they're only hitting 85% of regular passports on time (10 days)
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...bp_v25_WEB.pdf
3180 staff. Issuing 5.5million passports a year, plus other documentation.
That's over 15,000 passports a day, on average. But since most people are idiots, I expect over the summer they're dealing with twice that, maybe more, at times.
They're hitting 99% of passports on time, as the official turn around is 3 weeks. 10 days is an internal target, and the document clearly states that they missed that due to very high volumes over the summer. If the general populace were a little more organised and got their new passports sorted in advance, I imagine they'd be a lot closer to that 10 day target.
The big problem with working in the public sector is that no matter how well you do that job, most people will only ever consider it good enough. So you never get any thanks for doing your job - you only get kicked in the teeth when something goes wrong.
Agent (30-09-2013),peterb (30-09-2013),santa claus (30-09-2013)
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