Hundreds of young people throughout the UK are being put in the position where they are waiting with bated breath for their passport to be processed in time for an up-coming holiday.

With setbacks such as a lack of staff, train strikes and over subscription of applications it is not uncommon to see queues of anxious travellers waiting outside HM Passport Office for a face-to-face appointment.

This was the case for 18 year-old Grace Marshall from Wokingham who was forced to spend hundreds of pounds after receiving weeks of ‘false promises and awful service’ from the passport office.

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HMPO states that a passport should arrive within 10 weeks of applying and after posting the current one back to them.

Grace said: “I applied for my new passport on April 8, before my 18th birthday so I was sure that I would receive it in time for my holiday on Sunday, June 26 to Nice, France.

“After the 10 week mark I started to call the office and was constantly told that I would receive priority call-backs due to my up-coming holiday.”

After months of studying and weeks of A-Level exams, she was looking forward to accompanying her friend to France to visit her father and as a post exam de-stresser.

Instead, she spent the day of her final Biology A-Level waiting on hold for hours to the passport office after 12 weeks of waiting for an up-graded passport to be processed.

She added: “On Saturday, June 25 I was finally told by customer service that the best option was to go to the passport office in London in person and wait for an appointment.

"This was a mix-up by customer services because when we arrived, we found the door being shut in our faces and staff unable to answer questions or give solutions.

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“It was shocking how we were being treated. Everyone was in the same boat and some people had driven for five hours to get their passports sorted. There was so much disrespect for our situation especially when they had told us to travel into London.”

In the end, Marshall was forced to reschedule her flight alongside her friend who refused to leave her to travel alone.

This added a further £300 onto the trip including an extra £96 for an upgrade to get an emergency passport on Monday, June 27.

A HM Passport Office spokesperson said: “Staff are processing approximately 250,000 passport applications each week, and between March and May 98.5% of applications were completed within the published processing time of ten weeks.

“For the small percentage of customers whose applications take longer than ten weeks, there is an expedited service at no additional cost to help ensure that they receive their passport ahead of their travel.”

HMPO have said that they advise customers not to book travel until they have a valid passport as the new one will not have the same passport number and face-to-face passport services are only available by appointment.

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In Grace’s case, this £96 upgrade was not expedited due to the delay in processing the application. This meant that ten weeks after the application was processed was Tuesday, June 28. 

 “I had a lot of respect for the passport office but having been treated so dreadfully by them I am just disgusted. I was told that after that first phone call 2 weeks ago I should have instantly been passed on to a process team who would have sorted out my upgrade but that their team had made a mistake,” She said.

“Despite this they have refused to refund any money lost due to their error.”

The Wokingham teen has created a Tik Tok video about her experience, making light on the situation. She has said that there have been many frustrated young people reach out to her on social media with the same experiences.