Mine finally arrived in the post a week or two ago - a few days short of 18 months... but that was applying from scratch due to it expiring while overseas (and that includes the paper application sitting gathering dust for 6 months till someone realised it hadn't been moved over to the new online system). Hard to fathom how a simple renewal could be approaching a similar timeframe... and I was under the impression they were prioritising renewals.
Bookmarks