HMRC’s latest management information summary on its customer service performance over the first six months of this financial year shows the department is still struggling to handle post and telephone inquiries effectively, with response rates in both areas falling below target and a third of post taking over three weeks to be processed
According to the briefing, HMRC’s performance in clearing post within 15 working days has declined dramatically. The target for 2014-15 is 80%, and HMRC ended the previous tax year, 2013-14, well ahead with a clearance rate close to 90%.
However, the figures for April to September 2014 now show that performance in this area has been dropping steadily since April. HMRC now says it cleared 69% of post within 15 working days, compared to 77.3 % at the same point last year. This means that a third of mailed letters take longer than three weeks to be cleared.
The briefing says the drop in performance is the result of the diversion of staff to support tax credits call handling, with 2,000 staff moved to answer phones during the critical renewal period. As a result, the data shows HMRC handled 89% of calls on July 31, compared to just 16% last year.
On the ongoing problems with inquiries by post, HMRC states: ‘Volumes of post received continues to drop as we improve our call handling and seek to resolve queries “once and done”. We’re introducing digital post scanning so we can answer post more promptly and prevent delays caused by queries being passed between different areas of the department.’
The figures show a similar, but less marked, decline in HMRC’s performance in answering the phone to customers.
While the department hit the 80% target by the end of the last financial year, it is currently running at 74.5%, although HMRC claims this is a 1.8% increase compared to the same point last year, and compares to just 48% of calls in 2010 -11.
HMRC says it brought in total tax revenues of £243.6bn in the first half of the year. The department calculates this is about £7bn more than at the same point last year.
On compliance – an area of its work which came under close scrutiny in a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published this week – HMRC says it secured £8.8bn in additional revenues during the same period. This is just over a third of the total year-end target of £24.5bn, but the department says it is confident of hitting that figure, arguing that the profile for compliance revenues is generally much higher in the second half of the year than the first.
HMRC says it expects to secure more than £110bn in additional compliance revenues between 2011-12 and 2015-16. The PAC report highlighted concerns over the way in which HMRC measured and made comparisons over compliance yield, saying at times the department was comparing ‘apples with pears’; in this short briefing HMRC does not discuss the methodology it is using.
HMRC’s corporate report, How we're doing: our performance so far this year, is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/issue-briefing-how-were-doing-our-performance-so-far-this-year/how-were-doing-our-performance-so-far-this-year
