THE validity of passports could be cut from ten to five years and the costs could soar to £80 under government plans to improve the security of the travel document.

Passport Agency officials are also considering expanding the network of offices which issue the document because all first-time applicants will have to apply in person.

One radical move would be to locate passport offices in local council buildings. The move to reduce validity would have the advantage of ensuring that millions more people make an early switch to passports which include biometric details.

The first passports to include a biometric chip, initially facial recognition, are expected to be issued next year.

Another reason for the plan to make an adult passport valid for only five years is that there is uncertainty over how long the biometric chips will last. Officials have been told that the chips may need to be replaced after about five years.

The proposals for an overhaul of passport validity and a steep rise in costs are disclosed in the latest business plan issued by the UK Passport Service.

A study for cutting the validity of the passport to five years has to be completed and recommendations made to Home Office ministers by next March.

“Reducing the validity would help us to preserve the integrity of document design, deal with issues of chip lifetime and enable upgraded biometric chips to be inserted on a more regular basis,” the business plan said. The move would provoke controversy and officials insist that no decision has been taken on the possible change.

However, with the cost of a passport having risen twice in 11 months, officials gave warning of customer resistance. “It would create a significant extra financial burden on our customers,” the plan added.

Reducing the validity of the passport would allow the biometric chip to be enhanced to include eventually fingerprint and iris recognition.

It would also reduce the opportunity for counterfeiters to “catch up” with the new security measures embedded in the passport. More than six million passports will be issued in 2004-05, peaking at 6.8 million in 2006-07. A ten-year passport has cost £42 since last October, when an increase of almost 30 per cent came into effect.

The business plan estimates that costs will rise steadily to between £63 and £78 within four years. Applicants will receive both a traditional passport book and a new passport card, similar to a credit card, which will be valid for travel to EU states, Australia and Canada. In a further measure to increase security, all first-time applicants are likely to have to attend a passport agency office before being issued with a travel document.

The move would involve developing a network of high street passport offices or joint ventures with other organisations such as banks or travel agents.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We would replace older out-of-date passports more quickly so that everyone would get the modern more secure travel document more quickly.”

There are now Passport Offices in Belfast, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newport and Peterborough. In addition, the service has 2,000 partners in the high street, including the Post Office and some Worldchoice travel agencies where application forms are issued and, for a £5 handling fee, all the paperwork is forwarded to one of the service’s seven offices.

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