From 15th May 2006, customers applying for standard ten year passports will be automatically issued with a new style, bio-metric passport.
WHAT ARE BIOMETRICS?
Biometrics are unique personal features which help identify a document holder. The three most common biometric identifiers are facial recognition (photo), fingerprints and iris recognition.
WHAT IS A BIOMETRIC PASSPORT?
As part of the process to make travel documents ever more secure, the UK Passport Service (UKPS) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have agreed to adopt the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) recently published standards for the UK's first phase of biometric passports. This means that the first UK biometric passports will have facial recognition (photo) as the one biometric identifier. An important factor here is that the data required in support of applications can be taken from passport photographs. Passports will be in book form (as now) and incorporate a chip under a thick laminate on the observations page.
All applications received before 2nd May 2006 will be issued with a current machine-readable passport (includes digital photograph of applicant). We regret that we will be unable to process any standard passports between 2nd and 15th May 2006 due to the roll-out. Applications for all other types of passport (i.e. temporary and emergency) will remain unaffected.
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