Renewing a UK passport

Has anyone ever renewed a UK passport from abroad by posting the
documents to family or friends in the UK and having them send the
application to the passport office, receive the new passport and then
send it back to you abroad? I can't find any info about this online, it
would seem it's not possible but I fail to see why I should have to
spend almost 200 euros to do it overseas when it costs half of that from
within the UK.

You're not supposed to do it that way but you will probably get away
with it if there's nothing wrong with your application. You'll have to
get a UK application form though. A simpler solution would be to renew
on a UK visit which is permissible. The overseas passport price should
come down in April as well.

Thanks for your reply.



May I ask how you know that the price will come down in April? Do you know by how much? The current price is quite outrageous.



Unfortunately I'm not able to visit the UK right now (probably not until
May), I'm definitely regretting not renewing it quickly last time I was
there in August but I was short on time and was sure I'd be back before
it expired mid-March. :/

It was the Home Office's main selling point to compensate for the loss
of passport services at overseas posts. Given that all passports are now
processed in the UK they will have a hard time justifying the double
overseas price beyond April when the last overseas offices close.



How do you travel to the UK? If you go by Eurostar or ferry I doubt
you'll have any problems going on a recently expired passport. Plenty of
people who have loss their passports manage to get home by train or
ferry. It might be more difficult to do this if you fly.

By Eurostar. But I wouldn't risk travelling on an expired passport even
with them. Last time they didn't want to let me through because I still
had a luggage tag sticker on the back. Also they do scan passports so
I'd imagine the scanner would flag it as expired.

Don't let anyone know but I did just what you are suggesting



My sister lives in Norwich and I used her address to renew my and my
husband's passport. It was some time ago, but we did not have any
problems.

Thank you for your reply. I was hoping to hear from someone who'd tried it out. Glad it worked for you. :)