An angry mother-of-two has had to put a family holiday on hold after being refused a British passport.

Theresa Cherry, of Pondfield Road, Parson's Heath, Colchester, was born in a British military hospital in Germany while her father was in the Army, so has a British birth certificate.

Miss Cherry has been living in Britain for the past 27 years, after arriving in the UK as a child on her parents' documents.

But the Passport Agency has told her she will have to produce a copy of her father's birth certificate and her parents' marriage certificate before she can get her own passport.

Her two children, who were both born in Colchester, have also been refused passports.

The Passport Agency has said that despite being born in the UK the children do not automatically qualify for British citizenship until their mother can prove her nationality.

Miss Cherry has not seen her father for 15 years and said she had no idea where he was now.

She said: "I am really mad about this. We had been planning to go to Germany in September, but I cannot risk booking anything until I have sorted the passports out.

"I am absolutely disgusted. It says on my birth certificate that it is a British birth certificate."

A spokesman for the Passport Agency said being born in a British forces hospital did not automatically mean the person would have British citizenship and to gain a passport they would still need to show they were of British descent.

He added that even though Miss Cherry did not know where her father was born and was not in contact with him, she would still be able to get copies of the documents from the Registrar General's office, where all such records were held.

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