MORE and more Brits are opting for a holiday abroad, thanks to the travel restrictions being lifted.
However, families are being urged to check their passports, as many have expired during lockdown.
Not only that, but new Brexit rules could mean that a passport expiry date is wrong, as the additional 10 months on top of a 10-year-passport are no longer valid.
The government's passport checker lets you see if you need to update your passport before your next trip, depending on where you are going.
Most countries in Europe only require Brits to have three months left on them, although other destinations require at last six months.
By inputting your destination, as well as your date of birth, passport issue date and passport expiry date, it will reveal if you need to renew now.
You can find the government passport checker here.
For example, even if a passport says it expires in November 2021, if it was issued in March 2011, this means it actually expired in March 2021.
The government website confirms: “Your passport must also be less than ten years old on the day after you leave.
"If you renewed your current passport before the previous one expired, extra months may have been added to its expiry date.
"Any extra months on your passport over ten years may not count towards the minimum period needed.”
If you have a blue passport, then it will be in date as they have only been issued since 2020, but many burgundy ones are starting to expire.
Many Brits have also fallen victim to the new rules – passenger Abi Campbell was stopped from boarding her flight back earlier this year to Glasgow from Tenerife after thinking her passport was valid.
Despite expiring in May 2022, the issue date was August 2011 – meaning it is only valid up to August 2021.
Some Brits have even had to wait up to 10 weeks to get their passports back due to a surge in applications and many staff still working from home.
Traveller Claire Mochar was forced to cancel her holiday after she applied for a new passport on July 16, but hadn't even been processed after three weeks.
Last summer, a backlog of 400,000 passports was reported, after more than a million passports expired during the lockdown.
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