Misleading passport expiry date

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:29pm

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Joined: 2 May 2019

A heads up. My passport shows an expiry date of July 22. I need to travel back to the uk for a funeral and thought I was ok as there is more than six months until it expires. However, a Facebook post prompted me to check this out. On checking the uk yougov site it turns out it actually expired back in April ! Can’t fast track an overseas passport so had to apply for an emergency travel document from the British consulate in Alicante. After brexit the passport expiry date is based on the date of issue, added on months do not count. Mine was issued in Oct 2011. Brexit. The gift that keeps on giving. At least I’ll get a blue one.

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Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:51pm

GrahamLynn

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Location: El Raso

Joined: 9 Jul 2017

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:51pm

Ok so to travel back to The U.K. your U.K. passport is valid until 23.59 on the expiry date.

It’s the other way round where you will have a problem.

A U.K. passport for travel to the EU is only valid for 12 months from the date of issue as well as that you need 6 months remaining on your passport to enable you to travel to the EU.

So basically you may only travel to the U.K. within 9 years and 6 months of the date of issue.

Pre 2018 you could apply to renew your passport up to 9 months before it expired and the extra months were added on to the passport. But when the U.K. voted out of the EU, we found that the ruling was that passports could only be accepted from a third country for a maximum of 10 years.
So from 2018 all new passports were issued for a max of 10 years.

It’s only created a problem this year when because of Brexit the rules were then enforced.

Hence the reason why there is a handy calculator on gov.uk to work out when your passport expires.

https://www.gov.uk/check-a-passport-travel-europe

Lynn