rules were overhauled<\/a> in February following the rollout of the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system requiring non-visa visitors to apply for permission to travel before their arrival. <\/p>\nThe updated rules required dual nationals travelling to the United Kingdom to use a valid UK or Irish passport, or a valid passport with a certificate of entitlement. Dual nationals cannot get an ETA.<\/p>\n
The family were boarding their plane home from Spain when they were flagged.<\/p>\n
Mum Sarah Rodgers told the BBC they thought the issue would be sorted out by the help desk and they would return home on another flight.<\/p>\n
“It was when they said ‘no’ that I started to get stressed,” she said.<\/p>\n
After heading to the consulate the following morning, the family were told it “could take weeks to sort out”.<\/p>\n
Rodgers said many families with dual national children were unaware of the rule change.<\/p>\n
“The rules say that you only need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) if you aren’t British, so we assumed it didn’t apply to us,” she said.<\/p>\n
The family were staying with her partner’s relatives in Austria while they waited for Lily’s British passport to be approved.<\/p>\n
In a statement, a Home Office spokesperson said information advising dual nationals to carry the correct documentation had been available since October 2024. <\/p>\n
“A substantive communications campaign on the introduction of ETA has been running since 2023.<\/p>\n
“This requirement applies to all British citizens, regardless of other nationality, taking the same approach as other countries including the United States, Canada and Australia.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Scottish family returning home from holiday has been denied entry to the UK over a passport rule…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7416,59,57,58,50,56,17696,54,55],"class_list":["post-570512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-air-travel","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-uk-europe","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}