Booking a holiday can be a stressful time what with finding the right destination, hotel and best price, but it seems Londoners are most guilty of neglecting to check when their passport runs out.

Flight - check, hotel - check, transfer - check, passport - out of date!

Recent research has revealed people living in parts of west London are among the most disorganised travellers who require last-minute emergency passports to be issued.

Those living in Twickenham and Southall are some of the biggest culprits for forgetting to renew their passport on time, meaning they have to cough up an extra £55.50 for the one-day premium service, on top of the standard £72.50 renewal price tag.

While 6.5% of the population in Twickeham applied for the lucrative service, 3.3% of people in Southall did the same.

In relation to the top five cities in the UK, Londoners took the top spot with 42,376 emergency applications made, based on data between August 1, 2015 to July 31, 2016.

The city in second place was Glasgow with 6,609 one-day passport service applicants, followed by Belfast, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Most emergency passport applications for their population size:

1. Redhill, Surrey - 14.5% of the population applied

2. Llandundo, Wales - 7.8%

3. Tonbridge, Kent - 7.1%

4. Twickenham, Greater London - 6.5%

5. Romford, Greater London - 5.6%

6. Guildford, Surrey - 5.4%

7. Kilmarnock, Scotland - 3.3%

8. Southall, Greater London - 3.3%

9. Chester, Cheshire - 3.2%

10. Llandrindod Wells, Wales - 2.9%

Out-of-date passports are in fact costing UK travellers a whopping £14.1m a year, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by Airport Parking and Hotels (APH).

The data also revealed the HM Passport Office has received 254,529 applications for its premium one-day passport service in the past year.

Beverley Barden, head of marketing at Airport Parking and Hotels (APH), said: “It’s shocking to see how much money is being wasted because of people being disorganised and not making sure their passports are kept up to date.

“With many countries requiring that visitors must have at least six months’ validity left on their passport, anyone that might have to visit those places at short notice should make sure theirs has enough time for them to be able to use it.

“When booking holidays, it really should be a standard check for people to make sure their passports are valid.”

For more information on what to do for an emergency passport, and other passport advice, visit APH Community Blog