The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is an executive agency of the Home Office in the United Kingdom. The agency became operational on 1 April 2006, succeeding the UK Passport Agency, after the passing of the Identity Cards Act 2006.
The service provides passports for British nationals, and life event certificates such as birth, death, marriage and civil partnerships. The UK passport provides evidence of a person’s nationality and allows UK citizens to leave and re-enter the country.
All adult first time passport applicants are now required to attend an interview with the Identity and Passport Service in order to verify the identity and status of the applicant.
IPS' headquarters is in London and it has seven regional offices around the UK, in London, Glasgow, Newport, Belfast, Peterborough, Liverpool and Durham as well as an extensive interview office network. On 1 April 2008, the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) became a subsidiary of IPS.
Famous quotes containing the words united, kingdom, passport and/or service:
“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 24:7,8.
“It is better to pay court to a queen ... than to worship, as we too often do, some unworthy person whose wealth is his sole passport into society. I believe that a habit of respect is good for the human race.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)