After a raft of senior departures from HMRC, two temporary director generals have been appointed to replace Jennie Granger and Ruth Owen at the tax authority on an interim basis, taking over responsibility for the critical portfolios of business tax, Making Tax Digital and compliance, and customer services, although neither are permanent appointments
David Richardson has been named as interim director general for customer compliance and will take over responsibility for business tax compliance and oversight, replacing Jennie Granger, who left HMRC at the end of June and was understood to be returning to Australia. He will also come in as plans for Making Tax Digital continue to raise concerns for business with the tight timetable for introduction of quarterly reporting in 2018.
In terms of next steps in the recruitment process, an HMRC spokesperson told CCH Daily that 'we have not made any official annoucement' about permanent hires but the biographies on HMRC have been updated.
Richardson is currently director of counter-avoidance, a post he has held since 2014 when the counter-avoidance directorate was set up. He will continue to be responsible for counter avoidance until a permanent replacement for Granger is named.
Before he joined the counter-avoidance team, Richardson was director of specialist personal tax at HMRC. An HMRC official through and through, he joined the old Inland Revenue as a trainee inspector in 1979 and has been a director at HMRC since it was formed in 2005 in a wide range of compliance and policy roles.
Rachel McLean replaces Ruth Owen in an interim role as director general for customer services, stepping up from her current role as director of finance and planning in customer services. Her background is finance and she is a CIMA trained accountant, as well as a masters in change management.
She joined HMRC in 2015 from Transport for London where she was head of finance, and then subsequently finance director (interim) and change director at London Underground and London Rail for a year from 2014 to 2015.
Owen left HMRC on 18 May after five years at the tax authorities. Before joining HMRC she spent seven years in various roles at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from 2005 to 2012 and joined HMRC without any prior tax knowledge. At the time of the original announcement, HMRC said she was taking up a job in the private sector, but it seems that she may be relocating to Australia.
Jon Thompson, HMRC chief executive, said: ‘Rachel and David will be in post until permanent appointments are made following a fair and open competition for the Director General roles.’
HMRC has also created a new role of director general for border coordination, with Karen Wheeler in the position.
The new role will oversee the cross-government approach to coordinating work at the border, bringing together the work of 18 departments across policy, strategy, operational delivery, IT, infrastructure, legislation and security.
Wheeler joins HMRC from NHS England and has previously worked in the Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office and as a management consultant in the private sector.
Official HMRC biographies updated (no official notifications were sent out)
Report by Sara White