By Hassan Geele
A university student in Leicester has shared his complaints of a lack of embassies within the city causing many issues in retrieving expired passports.
Leicester is seen as one of the most multicultural and diverse cities in the United Kingdom, with a variety of nationalities living there, but foreign residents need to travel to either Birmingham or London when renewing their passports.
Said Hassan lives in Leicester and studies at the University of Derby but earlier this year needed to renew his Dutch passport.
Mr Hassan said he witnessed many people in passport application centres being sent back a long distance for the smallest errors, which was extremely costly for them.
Mr Hassan claimed that the journey to London to the Dutch Embassy was a “gruelling long journey” for which he paid a costly amount in petrol.
“There were so many people [at the embassy], even though I came on time I waited at least 2 hours for my appointment.”
After being called for his appointment, he said the document checking was extremely long and was told he was missing documents even though he was not and eventually got his passport renewed.
Mr Hassan believes that if Leicester had a local Dutch embassy, it would be less costly and easier for residents living in Leicester, adding: “Hopefully the council within Leicester will seek to sort this issue out.”
