A BACKLOG of 5,000 passport applications has built up after serious problems developed with a computer system only weeks after the inception of a new online service.

The Home Office agency in charge of issuing the travel documents has now withdrawn the online application service because of mounting difficulties in issuing passports.

Some applicants have been asked to resubmit passport applications on paper and others have had application fees and other costs refunded because of the problems.

Staff are working longer hours at the Identity and Passport Service in Newport, South Wales, to tackle the backlog.

The problems with the online application system, which was begun on May 16 and withdrawn 20 days later, on June 4, are disclosed today in Computer Weekly.

Under the system applicants fill in the form online, pay online and can print out the form at home. They then send the old travel document plus photos to the passport service who issue the travel document.

Staff at the passport office realised that difficulties were preventing them turning round applications as quickly as promised soon after the service was started.

The disclosure that the Siemens Business Services online system was withdrawn after operating for less than three weeks is a serious embarrassment to the Home Office.

The Prime Minister and John Reid, the Home Secretary, have praised the Passport Agency as an area of government with high levels of customer satisfaction.

The agency is also the organisation that is to develop the identity card scheme, which will involve issuing tens of millions of cards to British citizens.

But the failure of the new online system has led to the agency being unable to meet its target of issuing travel documents within three weeks and has caused anxiety for would-be travellers.

Rob Dustan, from Dorset, a former computer manager, thought that he would have to cancel his holiday with his six-year-old son when his passport failed to arrive. Mr Dustan applied on May 22 expecting it to be sent to him within three weeks of the documents arriving in Newport. It took almost six weeks and arrived only last Thursday — after Mr Dustan had contacted the media about the difficulties he was facing.

Mr Dustan claims that when he asked the Passport Agency why it had not told applicants earlier of the problems with the system, he was told: “We are very embarrassed and don’t want this going to the press.”

A Home Office spokesman said that although there had been seven months of trials before the system went live, problems developed within three weeks. “Customers applying through this route were having to wait longer for their document”, he said.

Out of a total of 18,000 applications received, 13,000 have been issued and there remains a backlog of about 5,000.

The spokesman said that the agency expected to clear applications at a rate of 500 a day. He refused to disclose how many of the 13,000 applicants had received their passports within the three-week target promised, or how many of the 5,000 backlog had been waiting longer than three weeks, other than saying that it was “a very small proportion”. “I am not going into figures,” the spokesman said.

He added that he had no idea when the system would be operating again, but that “we do not want to rush it”.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said that the latest disclosure was “a terrible omen for the forthcoming identity cards scheme”.

He said: “If the Identity and Passports Service — supposedly the flagship of competent government IT procurement — can’t handle 18,000 applications, how will it ever be able to run a database of every British citizen, with millions of applications a year?”

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

The cost of the 1999 fiasco was £12.5 million

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