Hello! My partner is born in Scotland, immigrated to Canada with his parents when he was 9 months and has only been back during his late teens/early twenties. He is now 52. It seems that the requirements for a countersignatories are even more stringent than usual because he lost his passport at some point between his 20s and 50s.

Does anyone have any suggestions? He has relatives there but of course relatives can't sign! How can he possibly get someone who knows him, lives in the UK and is of one of the professions listed??!??

Any advice would be appreciated, as we are hoping to travel to Europe in March...but only if we can get his passport sorted out!

Nancy

Can't he just pay a notary public to countersign?

According to the information we have, "The person countersigning the application form must live in the UK, hold a current British, Isle of Man, Channel Islands or Irish passport and have known the applicant* for minimum 2 years. They must write their valid passport number in section 10 of the form. Old blue passports are not acceptable as a countersignature’s passport."

Can you bypass this by getting a Canadian notary public to do it? It sounds to me like this isn't an option unfortunately.

Where are you getting your information from? It's not accurate (or perhaps is not applicable to applications from overseas). Take a look at the "countersignature" information on pp10-11 of the linked document - the countersignatory should hold a "UK, Irish or other EU, US or Commonwealth passport" - so anybody with a Canadian passport would do.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...ance_10.13.pdf

Oak's right. I was born in Scotland and came here on my mum's passport (lost a long time ago) and didn't have any problem getting UK passport. I had a Canadian do the signature thing.

Seems I may have been misinformed or else misinterpreted the info. I'll have a close look through the doc you gave me the link for. Thanks a bunch!

The requirements for countersignatures for applications made in the UK and overseas differ. The latest guidance linked to by Oakvillian is correct.

When I applied for my British passport I just had people in Canada sign and it was accepted without any problems. As I was in graduate school at the time I just had professors sign mine. None of them were British citizens but there were no hiccups and my passport was processed very quickly.

Thanks so much for all the advice and encouragement--I will let you know how it goes!