The fees for passports and chargeable consular services provided by British consular posts overseas are to change from 01 April 2008. On the same date, the fee for legalisation services provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London and overseas will change.

These changes will ensure that the full cost of providing services at home and overseas are recovered without any claim on public funds, enabling us to meet the increasing demand, while maintaining high standards of service.

Why have the fees increased?

Costs have increased for several reasons:

• The consular network across the world has had to expand to keep pace with an ever-increasing number of British nationals travelling and living overseas.
• Security has had to be enhanced world-wide to protect staff and customers.
• Improvements to global IT systems and additional costs associated with maintaining biometric passports have increased costs.
• The re-alignment of FCO management accounts has resulted in a significant increase in the overseas overheads (for local management).
• General cost movements and increases in staff numbers have increased when compared with the 2007 costs which were used as the baseline for the last fee increase.

Passport fees, in particular, have increased for the following reasons:

• To cover the cost of issuing passports overseas.
• To cover the costs of providing consular assistance/help to British nationals who find themselves in difficulty while overseas.
• To cover the extraordinary consular costs arising from disaster overseas that affect British Nationals. The ECP is retained in the Emergency and Disaster Reserve (EDR) held by the Treasury.

Why is it more expensive to issue passports overseas than in the UK?

• The FCO issues a little over 500,000 ordinary passports each year from 104 locations, (plus emergency and temporary passports from other posts) and must recover the full costs of issuing through the fees.
• We cannot match the economies of scale at the Identity and Passport Service, which is able to exploit issuing 10 times as many passports from just a handful of locations.
• Consular costs also include the costs for maintaining UK based staff overseas e.g. residential accommodation
• The standard adult passport fee provides the holder with a travel document that is valid for 10 years. Over its 10-year life, that works out as a cost of just under £12 per year. It also provides the passport holder with access to consular assistance services throughout the world for the same period.