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:
“We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 13:44.
“All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery- ticket up to a passport to Paradise.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)