Your UK passport tracker has gone quiet. Read the dates in the right order first

HM Passport Office guidance is explicit that processing time starts from when it receives your documents. The application history shows both the submission and the document arrival, often separated by several days of post, and the gap belongs to Royal Mail rather than to the office.

The gap explains why so many applications appear to be running late when they are inside the published expectation. Someone tracking from submission has added their own posting time to the office's processing time and is comparing the total against a figure that only ever described the second part.

The practical instruction is narrow and useful: find the documents received line, and count from there. If that line is not present yet, the wait has not formally begun however long ago you applied.

The published expectation for the standard online service is up to three weeks from receipt of documents. Alongside it sits a commitment that matters more than the number: if the application needs more information, or if an interview is required, the office says it will tell you within those three weeks.

Read together, those two statements are more informative than either alone. Silence inside three weeks is not evidence of a problem, because a problem would generate contact. It is the absence of contact combined with time beyond three weeks that starts to mean something.

The office also says it updates the page when it has finished checking the application. A page that has not changed is therefore a page where the check has not concluded, which is different from a page where nothing is happening.

The digital identity route replaced the countersigned photograph for applications made with a digital photo. The person you nominate receives an email with a link and a reference, signs in, and answers questions about you. Their part is short, but it is theirs, and an application sits at that stage until they act.

The eligibility rules catch people out because they are stricter than a character reference. The person must have known you personally for at least two years, and must not be related to you, in a relationship with you, or living at the same address. Choosing a family member because they are the easiest to reach is the common error.

If the confirmation is not completed, or the office is not satisfied with it, the fallback is a paper route requiring a fresh countersigned form, photographs, and a different countersignatory. A reset of that size is worth avoiding, so check that your nominated person actually received the email rather than filing it as spam.

Before three weeks have passed from the documents received date, the useful thing to check is whether the office has tried to contact you. Requests for more information arrive by email or post and are easy to miss, particularly where a spam filter has intervened.

After three weeks from that date, the position changes. The office's own commitment was to make contact within that period if anything was needed, so passing it without contact and without an update is the point at which enquiring is proportionate rather than premature.

Where travel is booked and close, the standard service is the wrong instrument for the problem rather than a slow version of the right one. The urgent routes exist as separate services with their own appointments and fees, and they cannot be applied retrospectively to an application already in the standard queue.

One thing worth separating from the wait entirely: an application that has not yet reached documents received because the post has not arrived is a postal problem. Nothing the office can do speeds up a parcel that has not been delivered, and chasing the office about it produces no change.