Brits spending £3.5 million every year to replace lost passports when abroad

Losing one’s passport while abroad is one of the biggest fears of many Brits. And it’s costly, too.

The UK’s refusal to enter into the Schengen agreement may be (serendipitously, or perhaps it was a concern all along) sparing the country from the brunt of the current refugee and migrant crisis hurting eastern and central Europe, but one annoyance of Britain’s stand-offish approach to further integration with Europe has always been the need to carry one’s passport when leaving or entering Blighty…

Most other European countries are pretty much borderless to one another, meaning citizens can travel freely between as many as 26 countries on mainland Europe. And new data from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) published this week has revealed the true cost to Brits forced to travel with their most valuable document – their passport – to hand.

According to the FCO, between April 2014 and March 2015, Brits spent £3.5 million on emergency travel documents (ETDs) and replacement passports during their time either abroad or upon return to the UK.

During the space of those 12 months, British embassies around the world had to issue 37,890 ETDs, while the number of passports reported as lost or stolen reached 20,600.

When you bear in mind that it costs at least £167 to replace a lost passport while abroad, that’s quite an outlay for something every Brit needs in order to get home. Well, not quite. An ETD allows Brits to travel through up to five countries on their way back home, but once in the UK they must then apply for a new passport.

The cost of an ETD is £95, while the fee to replace an adult passport once home is £72.50. The FCO advises that Brits take out adequate travel insurance before heading overseas, and urge holidaymakers to make use of hotel safes whenever they can – British passports are in-demand on the black market, particularly in these troubled times, and so are attractive to would-be thieves.

When out and about, if your passport is your only form of photo ID (often mandatory in some countries), then Tom Lewis, insurance spokesman for travel website Gocompare.com, has this advice: “Keep your passport in a secure bag or inside pocket. If you don’t need it with you, for example if you’re spending a day on the beach, leave it in a hotel safe.”

Common sense advice, sure, but there’s more from the FCO: “Travellers should take two photocopies of their passport and leave one with somebody at home, while taking the other with you, keeping it separate from the original.”

Having an identifiable copy of your passport can expedite the process of obtaining a replacement passport or ETD, the FCO says.