Employees of the passport office are starting a five-week strike over salaries and pensions

Passport table workers begin five-week strike amid escalating civil service conflict over work, pay, pensions and conditions.

More than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union across eight sites are withdrawing from an escalation of a long-running dispute.

Pickets will be held on Monday outside the offices in the village GlasgowDurham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast and Newport in Wales.

The union said that those who take action will be supported by the strike fund.

PCS General Secretary Mark Servotka wrote in Govt calling for urgent talks in an attempt to resolve the dispute.

After talks with unions representing health workers and teachers, he accused ministers of treating their own staff differently than others in the public sector.

The union is stepping up strikes, with more than 130,000 public workers nationwide scheduled to walk out on April 28.

The Home Office said the passport office had already processed more than 2.7 million applications this year, adding that more than 99.7% of standard applications were processed within 10 weeks, with the majority delivered to customers in much less than that time.

There are currently no plans to change the official guidelines, which say it takes up to 10 weeks to get a passport.