Help! Home Office won't return passports for urgent travel

[daveyb51]

I am an Italian citizen and my wife who is Australian recently got a new Australian passport so she had to renew her EEA Family Permit. We sent off our documents a few months ago and now need to make an urgent trip to Holland. We let the Home Office know 10 days ago and they said our passports should be with us in 5 working days. Nothing has arrived and when I spoke to the Home Office again today (we've rung about 5 times) they said the passports had not even been sent. They wouldn't explain why or answer any of our questions. We were meant to be flying out on Monday but will most likely have to cancel. The Home Office refuse to tell us where our passports even are (is that legal?) Our only solution at the moment is that my wife is going to the Australian embassy on Wednesday to get a new passport. Does anybody have any advice? We've sent faxes to the Home Office, sent complaints, contacted our MP, but nothing seems to have worked. We feel like we're being treated like criminals without ever having done anything wrong. Any advice would be much appreciated.

[peppekalle]

What has your mp said?Have you received a response to your complain.Unfortunately some mps are not sympathetic to immigrants.

Keep records of all communications in case you wish to escalate your complain further.

[daveyb51]

Nothing unfortunately. At the moment our only option is for my wife to get another Australian passport but it's going to cost us around £300 so we can have it in two days. The most frustrating thing is the fact that the Home Office refuse to do anything more to help us or even let us know where our passports are.

[asim72]

As the things stand, home office works at its own speed. There is nothing you can do apart from whatever you have done already.

[ang3l.in.paradise]

This happened to me as well. At last i received a recorded delivery with a letter stating that the home office had lost my passport and that i had to apply for a new one.