I am a French citizen living in Scotland. Occasionally I need to use French government consular services, such as passport renewals. In France, you can do this from any official government building such as a local town hall. Abroad, it needs to be at an embassy or a consulate. In the UK, the main embassy is in London, and like so many things British, this renders it rather inaccessible to the majority of the country. Living close to Edinburgh, in theory I should be able to make an appointment to use passport services at the French consulate there. However, I don’t think anyone actually works there, and I don’t think they’ve had anyone working there for years. And the half-arsed level of service that they seldom offer makes me wonder if it might be as well just shutting the whole thing down. At least then what small portion of public money is spent on this could be put to actual good use, such as developing an accessible digital service instead.

I am signed up to the mailing list for the consulate. Every few months they put on a show of support offering a “tournee” (3-4 days) where the consulate opens its doors to allow you to do things like request a passport. The way it’s worded makes it sound like a travelling carnival, which is an apt image of the farcical show of concern for overseas citizen’s needs. Why it can’t offer services year round is beyond me, I suspect because the office lies empty, gathering dust the rest of the year. And because of the high demand for these services, even minutes after the online booking system is opened and the email is delivered to the mailing list, the scant few appointment slots on offer are fully booked up.

Just as bad is when you can actually get a slot, and have your hopes raised only to be dashed. I managed to do this recently. But at the final stage of confirming my slot, the online booking system tells me that what I’ve actually booked is a slot to visit the London consulate, which is 500 kilometres south of where I expected to go. Despite the title of the booking clearly indicating Edinburgh. It’s entirely unhelpful and clearly a show that no-one at this consulate has a clue what they’re doing.

How difficult is it really to offer someone a passport? If they’re already known to you as a citizen, if you already know their identity because you issued them identity documents in the past (all French Citizens are issued a National Identity Card which has all of the same identity information as a passport’s photo page), is it really so difficult to offer them an online box they can just press, pay the fee, and have a new passport mailed to them?

And it’s not just this one service that’s broken. Every few years France has presidential elections to decide who will be king for the next session of government. To vote in presidential elections you must attend a consulate and cast a vote via paper balloting. Never mind the fact that in parliamentary elections overseas french electors can cast a vote online. Don’t ask questions, pay no attention to that useful facility, it doesn’t exist when the president is being chosen, even though the voting process is exactly the same. At the time of the last election, all the electors in Scotland were instructed to go to one of 3 polling sites: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. The site you got was decided by the first half of your postal code. My postcode region is adjacent to Edinburgh, so of course they decided to make me go to the Glasgow one. A round trip of 5 hours by train versus just over 1 hour had it been Edinburgh. An error so obvious that is stands as yet another example that whoever is running this service doesn’t even care to make the most cursory glance at what they’re planning.

I don’t know how much the French government is wasting on this non-service. Their HQ in Edinburgh is right in the heart of the old town, in what must be one of the most expensive areas in the country to own or even rent a building. I don’t know what the point is in paying for consular staff if they’re not actually doing anything. I really hate to go down the “government efficiency” road on this, because I know governments can often be necessarily slow and clunky, and that’s when they’re working at their best. But when a government service is literally not doing anything, it does start to raise the question of if we would be better just not having it. I suspect at this point the only reason they still have the office is so someone somewhere can tick a box and say “X people are within travelling distance of an office if they need help”. Closing it down might force them to reevaluate and justify what they’re doing.

I am grateful that I am a Dual National, and that UK government isn’t being actively hostile towards me (for now). I am glad that for all its faults the UK does have a pretty good modern digital service, and the last time I needed British passport services it was a fairly easy process.

Et dans le cas improbable que quelqu’un du gouvernement français lise ce blog, pouvez-vous bien rendre visite au consulat a Édimbourg pour voir si il y a quelqu’un à leur poste, ou si ils sont tous en vacances permanente? Merci beaucoup.