[dtf]

Some British women now find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where the UK home office refuses to renew or grant them a UK passport, because their foreign passport is under a different name. (Greece and Spain are mentioned in [1], but I know people in France affected by this)

Where previously these women could at least travel to their birth country to visit dying relatives on their foreign passport, they are now locked out waiting two months for a £600 entitlement certificate. Meanwhile, non-British visitors can just pay £16 for an ETA on this whizzy app.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/16/border-rule...

[big-and-small]

While this is a real problem and I do have relative who had this issue like this there are ways to get new UK passport without paying £600 or changing legal name in other country.

It's just take digging in government rules and arguing. As long as it's not the first UK passport it's doable.

[dtf]

I'd love to hear any advice on that!

My friend went round and round and sent many documents back and forth for over a year trying to renew her British passport, to no eventual avail. UK authorities were extremely unsympathetic and unhelpful. The offending "misnamed" foreign passport was long expired and French authorities required a valid British passport to renew it - she was left without any passport at all for over a year, until the French took pity and provided an alternate path to renew her French passport.

[big-and-small]

Hey. I will ask how exactly it was solved and try to reply here in a day or two. My relative is woman so problem was that she had her original name in a passport from country of origin and UK passport had her name after marriage.