Wednesday 14 August 2024

HMRC Service Levels Fall Further


 

In the 2023/24 fiscal year, HMRC faced significant challenges in meeting its service standards. Here are some key stats that highlight the agency’s struggles:

  1. Telephony Handling Rate:

    • The successful handling rate for helpline callers seeking to speak to an HMRC adviser was 66.4%. This fell well below the departmental target of 85%.
    • Compared to the prior year’s 71.1%, this decline is concerning.
    • Thousands of callers suffered much longer wait periods, with 55,000 calls ‘timed out’ and automatically terminated after 70 minutes on hold.
  2. Customer Correspondence Timeliness:

Basically the service levels are shit.

Anyone remember the Taxpayers' Charter, isn't this meant to help taxpayers have some recourse against HMRC?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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14 comments:

  1. I do not know who fabricated these statistics but as an agent acting on behalf of client's you never get a postal response within 15 days (Usually 12 months later) and as for the telephone lines! Utter Carp!

    ReplyDelete
  2. They've got more tax revenues, although I suspect that's more to do with luck than skill.

    The garden variety Johnny Punter doesn't have a method of getting a response from the department..

    Your call isn't very important to us, go and piss up a rope.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HMRC can't meet their efficiency targets because due to the price of fish in Nicaragua

    https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/hmrc-warns-of-challenge-to-deliver-efficiency-target

    ReplyDelete
  4. HMRC closed Wrexham tax office that had 300 staff helping call centres with technical calls and also providing instant assistance to under trained call centre operatives to resolve taxpayers enquiries - this decision along with closure of many other offices drained the department of highly experienced staff and has resulted in the current dire situation they find themselves in. It's like a submarine getting rid of all the engineers and just leaving the cooks to operate the vessel it would soon sink.

    ReplyDelete
  5. HMRC made 2 bad mistakes. Firstly they merged the call centres with caseworkers resulting in thousands of experienced caseworkers leaving or retiring early rather than working in a call centre

    Secondly in the expectation of people using online services the got rid of another 6k customer service staff.

    They now find themselves needing lots of staff but no experienced staff to train them and only offering min wage. It's an awful place to work. Glad I took early retirement. If they hadn't moved me into the call centre role I would have still been there doing a bloody good job as a caseworker. Turnover of staff at the lower grades ( the ones that do the bulk of the work) is running at something like 15% you can't run a business like that.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Questions will be asked about this.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/hmrc-cancels-fines-taxpayers-customer-service-chaos/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Replies
    1. Of what, HMRC misconduct???

      Delete
    2. @13:55 You don't know the half of what goes at HMRC. I actually worked there for 30 years and will live with the scars for the rest of my life. The place is rife with corruption and simply horrible behaviour

      Delete
    3. So as @13:55 politely asked - be aware of what?
      How do you know that he/she doesn't know half of what goes (on) at HMRC? You don't.

      Delete
    4. @22:33 I disagree. @13:55 wasn't really "polite", they were suggesting HMRC misconduct but didn't share any details of what, if anything, they know. I suggest they don't know the half of what goes on in the rotten place

      Delete
    5. @14:10. You're making things up. @13:55 was perfectly polite.
      They weren't suggesting anything, simply asking the previous poster to clarify the meaning of their bizarre "BE AWARE" message.
      You can suggest whatever you want but the fact remains that you have no idea what he/she knows about what goes on in HMRC.


      Delete
    6. Hi guys, sorry to intrude on this petty back and forth...I spent almost two decades working for HMRC in Debt Management/Distraint/Field Force and Compliance. Here's the sad truth...
      Believe me, you really DON'T want to know what happens in HMRC. Suffice to say, the internal conduct would NOT be tolerated in society at large.

      Delete
  8. Thanks for dismissing other people's conversation as petty.
    We can't all aspire to your level of genius, please try to be patient with we mere mortals.
    As many posters on here are either past or present employees of HMRC I suspect that they have a very good idea of happens there. Not as good an idea as you, of course.

    ReplyDelete