So cross, just found out that they stopped general renewal of passports on March 24th with little or no notice and certainly no readily available information, even travel experts have been saying that. Had I known that I would have tried to renew it a lot sooner, just in case. Looking like September is well off the cards now, oh well, I was of the opinion of it only having a 5% chance of going ahead. There's going to be a massive backlog when they start up again.
I'm not disappointed as such as I do have contingency plans for next year. All the same I did the application online last night with the digital photo and I have no doubt they will take immediate payment and I'm sending off my old passport off 9am tomorrow morning. You never know.