lost passport advice

[SizzleSquid]

My mum is travelling to France on saturday for the weekend and has lost her passport. i just looked on the passport website and seen that they do not re-issue lost passports on a same day service. Is this right? Does anyone know if there are any other ways of going to france without a passport? Is there somesort of visa available. ( my mum is a british citizen)
Thanks

[Buenchico]

Regrettably, I think it's extremely unlikely that your mother will be able to travel. The Passport Office take a missing passport very seriously and won't issue a replacement until they've carried out various checks (which is why the same day' service isn't available).

Unfortunately, your mother is a victim of the UK government's refusal to sign up to agreements which the rest of Europe are happy to enter into. Over 2 dozen countries are now signatories to the Schengen agreement, which permits travel without passport formalities between those countries. France is a Schengen member. If your mother was already in Germany, Greece, Malta or any one of many other countries, she could travel to France without any formalities. But the UK won't sign up, so we all have to go through passport control (Under completely separate rules, anyone with a national identity card, from any EU state, can freely enter any other EU state but our government still can't decide whether it should introduce national ID cards or not).

No form of visa will help because a visa isn't valid without a passport.

The only slim chance is to phone the Passport Adviceline as soon as possible, to see what they suggest. It's available 24 hours a day, so do it NOW:
0870 521 0410

Chris

[Dee Sa]

phone today and she may be able to collect tomorrow, dont suppose she has ever made a photocopy, its always handy to have one and make sure she can find all necessary documnets needed to get another one issued.
good luck.