Following an Ofsted review, inspectors said that the tax authority required overall ‘improvement’ on the way it ran apprenticeship schemes, while it had put thousands of people onto schemes without adequate training or support.  

Leadership and management were criticised after inspections found that the tax office, which first started rolling out its own apprenticeship training in 2017, made it mandatory for all employees to enrol on an apprenticeship in response to a ‘requirement’ to increase recruitment and training significantly.

In 2019 it placed around 2,500 new and existing employees on investigator office and professional accountancy tax technician apprenticeship programmes in the tax academy.