Hi Guys
I really could to with a bit of advice.
I have used the surname A (we will call it that to help with the explanation....lol) all my life.
Name A is on everything i need my name for on a regular basis (my birth certificate, driving licence, bank accounts, utility bills, doctors....etc).
Now as a child my mum remarried and thought it a good idea in all her wisdom to ask the school to put a name B on my file.
So when it came time for my national insurance number came it had the name B on it.
Inland revenue said that there wasn’t a problem with this as long as i never try and do anything fraudulently (trying to obtain benefits in two names…etc) but later in life there was a few problems with ID not matching, so I spoke to a solicitor and they wrote me out a stator declaration stating that the person with the surname B and national insurance number is the same person as the person with name A.
This has always worked perfectly with any issues that arose up until I applied for a passport.
Now on to my actual problem….
I’ll try and keep this a bit shorted as the passport office has constantly messed things up and either contradicted themselves or apologised.
I applied for a first UK passport and as I’m English and fall within a certain age bracket all I had to send them was a form filled in by someone that has known me for a number of years.
I sent this off and received a letter stating they needed more information and I needed to contact them. This then turned into the actual decision maker calling me back the following day.
She said that because I had put that I had been known by name B once that they would need to see that I have changed my name to name A.
After explaining the situation with her about name B and that there is nothing really that I can change as I only use name A, she requested that I send in my birth certificate so she could complete the application.
I sent this in and had a repeat letter from them saying they needed more information and I had to get the decision maker to call me back again.
This time she said she would need a stator declaration to explain the name. I said I have one of those (I actually forgot I had it until she requested it) but explained that it wasn’t a change of name and just explaining that the person with name A is the same person as name B. she asked me to read it out word for word to make sure it had the right heading…etc and said for me to send in the statutory declaration, driving licence a bank statement and a recent utility bill.
I sent this all in and guess what…… I get another letter saying they need more information.
So we go down the same route with a call back only this time she says she wants a letter from HMRC in the name A and a statutory declaration stating I have changed my name from name B to name A.
I reminded her about the situation with the names and explained that HMRC say there is not a problem with my name and that I would in effect be lying to a solicitor as im not changing my name to name A because its already name A.
She then completely changed her tone and started going on about me also needing to sit an interview…etc (that I expected anyway) and that if she was to give me a passport then there would be nothing stopping me from getting a passport in name B.
I then said ok ill go ahead and have the passport in name B but she said a letter from HMRC is not enough to get a passport.
This has gone back and forth with different departments and I had to make a complaint (even that was a problem because I had normal representatives claiming to be from the complaints department so they didn’t actually open a complaint).
It’s got to the point now that I need to get the ombudsman to step in.
I had a consultation with solicitor that agreed that I’m completely in the right and said went down the lines of the fact that it’s not a legal requirement to have name A with HMRC and it can be presumed that I am going to do something fraudulently. And he likened it to a woman that has got married and can use her maiden name as well as her married name (there’s not one rule for one and one for another as this is discrimination).
I need to send something off to the ombudsman so I was wondering if there was some legal stuff I could quote?
Thanks for any help given and sorry for the long post….lol
