Expired passport as ID?

[guest]

Hello.

I'm starting at St Andrews in September and it just occured to me that I dont have a drivers licence/provisional (nor do I want to pay £50 for one that I don't need) or a valid UK passport (I don't fancy spending 100 odd quid on a new one when I'm not going abroad any time soon - I'm a soon-to-be poor student for God's sake!). At the moment if I'm going out to a bar or club I take my expired passport; it's never been a problem before, but one of my friends recently pointed out to me that clubs are allowed to use their own discretion with that kind of thing and I might not be able to use it in St Andrews or Dundee. Anyone else use an expired passport? Or know how strict they are with all that sort of stuff?

Cheers.

[Kegrad]

I'm not sure about the passport, but if it's just to buy drinks and get into clubs etc then most places accept anything with a 'pass' logo (http://www.brc.org.uk/pass/default.asp?section_id=3&content_id=0). Once you're in St Andrews you can get a free myfife card that has that and doubles as a library membership card.

[donpablo]

I'm sure most of, if not all, the places in st andrews will accept your matriculation card as ID. The passport would probably depend on how expired it was and how old the photo was if anyone even checked that - if you have been using it fine in the past though i wouldnt imagine it would be a problem.

[Archie]

You won't be able to buy alcohol in any of the supermarkets using your matric card.

[Abserdman]

For legality reasons the acceptable forms of ID are:

A valid European drivers licence
A valid European passport
Anthing with the PASS hologram on it

However you will notice that this blatently excludes all of out American sudents who are unlikely to have any of these things. And so we ("we" being the bar staff at The Whey Pat Tavern) will take any other form of photographic ID as long as you also have your student card. At least I do.

Just how out of date is the passport? Is the photo still recognisably you? If not then you may find that providing your student ID (for the photo) as well as your passport (for the official-ness) is the best bet. However I don't know if the supermarkets will accept that.

[MelissaL]

Because of new Scottish laws in the last year or so to target underage drinking, matric cards can't legally be accepted in any place that cards really. The matric cards lack the holographic logo necessary to be accepted.
If your passport picture doesn't really look like you anymore (child rather than adult), an option that *might* be cheaper than a new passport is see about getting one of the new official UK ID cards. The government did scrap the requirement for all UK citizens to have one, but foreign nationals still get one and they're about 50 quid. I believe they should still be available for UK citizens if you requested one. At half the price of a new passport, it could be a more viable option. It's also easier to carry around than a passport. I appreciate having the ID card in my wallet as a foreign national than carrying around such as important document as a passport loose in my pocket.
However, don't discount getting a new passport. You might not have any immediate plans to travel, but if some international trip you wanted to go on in the next few years comes up, you'd have it at the ready instead of having to get a new one then.

[David Bean]

On the contrary, we have abolished the national identity card completely. No new identity cards are being issued, so any attempt to apply for one will fail. Furthermore there will be no requirement for migrants to carry cards, and cards already issued will at some point in the near future cease to be valid. I see no hypothetical reason why they shouldn't still be useable for proof-of-age purposes even if they are invalid, given that their probative value in respect of the bearer's birth date bears no relation to their validity for any other purpose, but in practice it is likely that staff enforcing age restrictions will cease to be trained to accept them.

To those lacking any other means of proving their age that Big Brother has deemed acceptable, the Citizen Card is it - and at £15 it's substantially cheaper than the identity card would have been.

[Haunted]

No new identity cards are being issued, so any attempt to apply for one will fail.

Unless you are a foreign national in which case you can (must?) get a biometric residence card which is the same thing in all but name.
http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_ ... .xsl/53.ht
http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_ ... /1690.htmm
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/while ... d-id-card/