Delivered or not delivered?

What happened

Mr V applied for a UK passport in summer 2011 using two Nigerian passports and his naturalisation certificate as supporting documents. HMPO said it delivered those documents by courier (for which Mr V paid a £3 fee) later in the year to Mr V's address, but as there was no reply, had put them through the letter box. Mr V insisted he had not received them. HMPO said the courier's handheld device recorded the date and time he called at the property by the use of GPS and the device also photographed the front door of the property, which Mr V confirmed was his door. HMPO was therefore satisfied it had delivered the documents correctly.

Mr V complained. He insisted he was at home at the time the courier put the documents through the letter box. HMPO did not investigate the circumstances as it relied entirely on the courier's handheld device indicating the courier was at the property.

When Mr V's MP wrote to HMPO, HMPO asked the courier to return to the property (which Mr V had since vacated). A lady who said she lived at the property gave the courier information which conflicted with that given by Mr V. HMPO did not tell Mr V about this conflicting evidence or the police, to whom Mr V had reported the loss of his UK passport.

What we found

We partly upheld Mr V's complaint. The protective marking HMPO applied to passports and supporting documents was appropriate.

HMPO's delivery policy complied with Information Assurance Standards and met the minimum requirements for delivery. HMPO did not correctly deliver Mr V's UK passport because it delivered it to his work address without getting his signature. However, we found a significant gap in HMPO's audit trail for the delivery of UK passports and supporting documents. HMPO's audit trail relies on the data from the courier's handheld device. The device does not prove whether the item was put through the letter box or wrongly taken by the courier. If the handheld device shows the courier was at the customer's door, HMPO does not recognise any other scenario than the documents being delivered. That was maladministration. Moreover, HMPO did not collect any data about such losses and so it could not satisfy itself that it had adequate measures in place to protect personal data (for example, passports) as required by the relevant Information Assurance Standard. HMPO did not properly investigate Mr V's complaint and did not respond flexibly to complaints such as Mr V's. HMPO had failed to retain documents in Mr V's case in line with its retention of documents policy.

We could not say that HMPO was responsible for Mr V's non-receipt of the documents. The effect of HMPO's maladministration was that Mr V was disempowered and disadvantaged because HMPO would not even recognise the possibility that his supporting documents had not been delivered, despite the fact it could not conclusively prove it had delivered the items. That further disadvantaged Mr V when he tried to recover them. HMPO compounded this by its poor handling of Mr V's complaint and we recognised the frustration and inconvenience this caused Mr V.

Our investigation was not helped by HMPO's failure to retain documents. Mr V was entitled to expect documents would be kept.

Putting it right

HMPO apologised to Mr V and paid him £500 compensation. It also agreed to review the data it gets to measure delivery performance, review how it handles complaints of non-receipt of documents and address the gap in the audit trail we identified.