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:
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 13:45,46.
“All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery- ticket up to a passport to Paradise.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)