During May’s 1230 TWC Bromley & Orpington meeting, 1230 TWC Member Liz Engel, gave us some information that surprised us all. Liz explained …..
Catch up
No one at the meeting had realised the importance of the issue date when checking passport validity or your passport was close to expiring. I then asked Liz if she could spare time to talk about this on 1230 TWC Business Beat Radio Sow, you can find the Podcast HERE.
In short her advice is:
For entry into Europe, your passport expiry date may not be valid so you need to make sure that your passport is no more than 10 years old. Prior to 2018 if you renewed your passport early, the extra months were added to the end of the 10 years. Now, since Brexit, these extra months are not recognised and if it is more than 10 years since the issue date you will probably be denied boarding.
On return to the UK you should have 3 months validity based on the actual expiry date printed in your passport. Not every country requires 3 months, some need 6 months and some just the duration of your holiday to be covered so you need to check this.
Little did I know the importance of this information to me until I received a frantic phone call yesterday afternoon from my son who had just discovered that unless he renewed his passport NOW he’d be unable to go on holiday in a couple of days’ time. I reassured him that I knew exactly the person to help with this – Liz.
Action!
When I phoned Liz she was in the middle of an imperative piece of work for a client, but she took the time to provide all the details we needed, but then proceed to make the application on his behalf. Unfortunately, his digital photo was refused, so he proceeded to dash out going to 4 photo booths before finding a working one. Success! Liz completed the application successfully at 10.35 pm that night! Phew, one happy son!
We can’t thank Liz enough for her painstaking efforts and my son isn’t even a client – yet!
Liz.engel@travelcounsellors.com
www.travelcounsellors.com/liz.engel
