TNAG-2961-FCO40-4240-Future-of-Hong-Kong-British-Consulate-General-building-incl-1993 — Page 56

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function in rented premises, or operate a postal service to

the Passport Agency in London.

6.

We will know the pattern of BN (0) passport issuing for

certain after the implementation of the phased registration programme for BDTCS to register as BN (0) s and receive new passports. This should come into operation this Autumn once Parliament has approved the Order in Council which sets it up. The phased programme should concentrate the minds of 3 million or so Hong Kong BDTCs who have not yet registered just over

500,000 BDTCs have so far been issued with BN (0) passports on their opportunity to retain a form of British nationality

after 1997. (We are assuming a 75% take up rate). To put in context the scale of the passport issuing load; the number of passport applications during the busiest part of the cycle is

likely to be greater than the total sum of applications

received by all our other overseas posts (currently running at just under 300,000 per annum).

7.

The Consulate General Steering Committee had already put a

considerable amount of work into achieving the right balance

in terms both of the building and the staffing. The original

design recognised the cyclical nature of passport renewal and consciously took a middle path; providing sufficient

accommodation to cope with an expanded workload (and the need for more staff) in the peak years without seeking to provide the space to meet the maximum possible demand, in order that the building would not be significantly too large in the years

of reduced demand. In the light of MRS' findings and

suggested options, we considered again the question of

accommodating the passport operation. We recalled that the

original brief which Ministers approved called for the

passport function to be included within the Consulate General, in accordance with the policy of gathering under one roof all

subconsgen28.NAT

JEB

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