When should I renew my passport?

Q My passport runs out towards the end of August next year. We normally go on holiday in May. Do you recommend that I should renew my passport before Brexit at the end of March 2019, or leave it until after we have been on holiday in May?

Cheryl N

A Three months ago, the answer would have been easy: renew now and benefit from up to nine months of unexpired time on your current passport. If your passport expired on 6 September 2019, you would formerly have been able to renew it on 6 December 2018 and get a new travel document valid until 6 September 2029. But this new passport would have a validity of 10 years, nine months. That is fine for as long as the UK is in the European Union. But once the country leaves the EU, British travellers will become citizens of a “third country” – which means they face tougher entry rules. In particular, travel documents cannot be valid for more than 10 years (or less than three months).

This is one of the many unforeseen consequences of Brexit. And its effects are difficult to forecast. If you are planning to holiday in Europe in May, and you expect to return less than three months before your passport expires, then you should renew before your trip. If, though, you are going to the US or one of the other countries that requires no extra validity, then there is no need to do so. But one of the imponderables is how Brexit will affect travellers’ behaviour in terms of passport renewals.

British passport-holders are now mildly financially incentivised to renew their documents as late as possible: the cost of each month of a passport’s validity is 63p (or, for under-16s, 82p). Conversely, there is no incentive to renew in the winter months for a trip the following summer. Therefore it is possible there may be a spike in demand shortly before the main holiday season of July and August.

Brexit on 29 March 2019 may also trigger a couple of other imponderables: people who will want to get a British passport with the words “European Union” on the cover before they disappear, and those who will want a new document without those words as early as they can. With the extra complication of Easter occurring shortly after the UK leaves the EU, it could get quite messy in the spring. So in your position I would renew the passport early in the new year, even though this involves losing six months or more of validity.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder