UK Passport Office staff commence strike over payment of salaries

Passport Office workers in the United Kingdom will launch a five-week strike on Tuesday following a disagreement over jobs, pay and pensions.

More than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) at eight sites are due to walk out in a culmination of a long standing dispute.

Picket lines are to be set up outside the offices in Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast and Newport in Wales.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said he expects to see “huge delays” for those trying to renew passports ahead of their summer holidays.

The Home Office has said there are currently no plans to change official guidance which states that it takes up to 10 weeks to get a passport.

Mr Serwotka told Sky News: “In my opinion there will be huge delays in the already 10 weeks that people are supposed to apply for passports, and there will be huge disruption on the fast-track service that people can use when they want to get a passport quicker.

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“The Government says it has got contingency measures in place so we’ll see how that works out over the next few days and weeks, but I would expect there to be delays.”

The PCS said those taking action will be supported by a strike fund.

Mr Serwotka has written to the Government calling for urgent talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.

He told Sky News on Monday that there has been “radio silence” from the Government without even “one minute” of negotiations since strikes began.

He added: “If the Government can talk to the health service, and I’m glad they did, to teachers, and I’m glad they did, to firefighters, and I’m glad they did, surely the question must be asked ‘Why are we now seeing this level of strikes and still the Government will not pick up the phone and have a single minute of talks to avert this disruption?’”

The union is stepping up strikes, with a nationwide walkout of more than 130,000 civil servants planned for April 28.

The Home Office said the Passport Office has already processed more than 2.7 million applications this year, adding that more than 99.7% of standard applications are being processed within 10 weeks, with the majority of those delivered to customers well under this timescale.

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