HMRC's ten year plan to cut £100M in costs and move remaining staff to 13 hubs will not, unsurprisingly, suit every member of staff.
As such HMRC has come up with a "brilliant" solution, designed to "help" those staff who feel that (or whom HMRC feels) they are not part of HMRC's bright new digital future.
Transitional Centres
A name more akin to something built for refugees fleeing a war zone.
Computing reports that HMRC will have transitional centres for people who are likely to leave the organisation within the next decade.
The question is which sites will be transitional?
Employees who find themselves in such a centre will doubtless feel a tad "demoralised".
Won't this cause more problems?
Notwithstanding this, HMRC plans to move certain roles and perhaps even teams to transitional centres where they will work until the department deems them obsolete.
What could possibly go wrong?
Tax does have to be taxing.
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It was said last week they were being called "halfway houses"
ReplyDeleteN.Ireland has the highest petrol prices in the UK. Enniskillen and Derry HMRC offices are 80 miles away from Belfast. 160 mile round trip. 800 miles of driving a week. HMRC know these people will become demoralised and leave. Thats the whole point. To force as many people out as possible. In a few years they will then say they have too many people in the regional centres.
ReplyDeleteFor Transitional Centers read "The Scrapheap" - that's what the bastards think of us.
ReplyDeleteThis is a continuation of the startegy used to close many local offices over the last 5 years. at one level it is "helpful" to staff who have longer to consider their options. On the other it avoids the need for the department to pay for large numbers of compulsory redundancies...but it does leave affected staff feeling unvalued and stressed for a considerable period of time. On top of this staff will be asked to do work outside their areas of expertise which is plain inefficient. Many will just up sticks and go or take early retirement.One thing it does not do is to ensure that HMRC retains the best / most experienced staff.
ReplyDeleteThey will no doubt "encourage" staff to move to the new centres but are not prepared to pay the travelling/ removal costs envisaged in the departments own expenses rulebook. When I worked for HMIT they would pay if you were moved more than 1 hour's travel away - now this is being stretched to 1 and1/2 hrs I understand.
This gives the lie to whether staff are appreciated as a real asset of the department or simply concerned with numbers.
The expenses rulebook is now ignored at every turn. They just pretend it is no longer valid. Unless you're a high flyer or SCS on a constant flight / hotel around the country tour. PS. The most experienced staff are leaving in droves - they are experienced enough to know that with the amount of staff who will be leaving, EXCOM will be sodding around with the amount of money payable to redundant staff....Ignore the rulebook chaps, WTF are the proles going to do.........
ReplyDeleteI remember people leaving years ago, not long after the merger. They joined Customs and Excise because they were determined to move up. Many of them seemed competent and experienced. But when everything stalled around 2006/07 they all left. It was like fuck this were not dealing with this crap.
DeleteThe work-shy, the arse licks, people nearing retirement and the dunderheads began to outnumber those with a bit of sense between their ears.
Thank you for your wonderful insight that really shoes that you should have gone with them. Thanks for insulting many, many people. Didn't a lot go to SOCA? What a wonderfully successful operation that was. Can I suggest that you fcuk right off?
DeleteThanks very much, Anonymous 18.44. Do you not think those staff in their mid to late 40s are/were trapped?? Doesn't mean they are/were work shy, arse links, people nearing retirement or dunderheads.
ReplyDeleteSome of us may have preferred to work on until 65 rather than be forced to bail out. There is no doubt in my mind, the inherited mindset of the IR screwed HMC&E workers and has ensured a legacy of shite management ethos.
ReplyDeleteTrouble was, the crap entities from C&E swallowed the Lean/Pacesetter crap hook line and sinker and amalgamated into the 'system', blame Common Purpose for most of it, and crap managers for the rest.
Here we go again....that old myth...the IR messed up the HMRC...it was all our fault again....bollocks !!
DeleteRemember before the merger, Inland Revenue was the best department in Whitehall envied by every other department...now we are the worst !!
Let's get it straight...the merger and it's crap senior management caused the chaos...should never have happened...not the staff.
Don't know what your point is....some of us have no choice but to swallow this shite.
So give us a break
Exactly. IR was doing pretty well as these things go before what amounted to a takeover by a far smaller department led to the upper management of the new body being dominated by the arrogant self-regarding little tin gods of C&E.
DeleteNo point on both entities having a go at eachother, Gordon Brown is the shitehawke who was the architect of this sorry mess. I squarely put the blame on him.
ReplyDeleteIR was doing pretty well before its takeover -what utter horseshit -the merger was inevitably a takeover by a larger organisation of vindictive petty box ticking drones with no concept of materiality , leaving old Customs staff to leave or work to IR guidelines
ReplyDeleteFormer IR people saying C&E bad, former C&E people saying IR was bad. The govt's divide and conquer tactic is working well with you lot.
ReplyDelete@22.49
ReplyDeleteI fail to see where you are going with this....it's irrelevant...we are now ALTOGETHER in one big pile of shite...have some sympathy for the poor bastards who are left in here.
A lot of people in Customs were pissed because the merger cracked open a department which was very comfortable and cosy in its own skin. A very competent department. I left after 10 years, but there were people who were convinced they were going up the totem pole in C&E, but in their eyes the Revenue fucked the whole thing up. The Revenue became known as the "dark side" lol. In Customs, like any big department there was a lot of back scratching and networking, where you would see an individual being promoted twice inside a year!!. The merger with the Revenue destroyed all that.
ReplyDeleteI know former C&E people in HMRC today, who, if the merger never happened, would be easily 2 grades higher than what they are now, obviously on a much higher salary. I am sure the same thing went on inside the Inland Revenue but maybe because C&E was smaller who hurt more.
Customs and Excise was a decent place to work but I'm glad I left. I feel sorry for people from both former departments who tried their best to be civil servants.
Odd then that many in HMRC jump two grades at once-from Officer to SIO. How does that happen. I worked for both IR and then HMCE and BOTH were the envy of other countries taxation and Customs services. Now we are nowhere, laughably the worst department in the Civil Service. Those at the coal face are the same, just that we are overseen by total fuckwits with no experience of IR or HMCE.
ReplyDelete