Closed petition Do not hold Passport during Visa application process

Closed on 19 September 2013

This is a request to adopt a more cost efficient and applicant friendly practice in the case of Visa applications.

Currently, an applicant's Passport is held with the Border Agency during the processing of a Visa application, which can, understandably, take months to get done.

The Passport could well be returned to the applicant during the processing. Even in cases where the passport is needed for the final check, applicants could be asked to send it back in.

Holding the Passport for the duration of the application process increases the costs of securely holding these valuable documents for the Home Office without providing substantial additional value. It does cause considerable inconvenience to the applicant.

Other countries have a process where the Passport is collected, viewed and verified against a copy at the time of application and if needed, collected again at the time of final approval - something that could be adopted here.