Postby etf » Wed Dec 11, 2024 2:59 pm
Another echo chamber proving to be on the money...even Sir Jim seems to be agreeing! If he hadn't hugely overspent available funds on MTD (his choice) areas of service would not have been as bad as they have been. The army should have been drafted in when this thread started.
Public Accounts Committee: Service levels improving, claim HMRC bosses
29 Nov 2024
HMRC chief executive Sir Jim Harra has apologised for poor HMRC service levels during an evidence session with the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, but assured MPs that service levels are now “significantly better” and he expects improvements to be sustained next year.
This is the first time HMRC bosses have appeared before the newly formed committee in this Parliament. Harra, alongside Myrtle Lloyd, HMRC’s Director General for Customer Services, and Justin Holliday, Chief Financial Officer and Tax Assurance Commissioner, faced tough questioning during a two-hour session on issues from helpline closures to whether HMRC will institute a callback service.
Customer service
Harra acknowledged poor levels of customer service had continued into the first half of this financial year, but reassured the committee that, since October, they have been “significantly better”. He said HMRC advisers had been hitting the target of dealing with 85% of call attempts “and expect to sustain that for remainder of this year and with the resources we’ve been given for 25-26 for next year.”
Nesil Caliskan (Labour) why callers were being cut off after waiting on hold for 70 minutes, with almost 7,000 calls experiencing this in 2022-23. Myrtle Lloyd explained this is a “technological limiter”, as long backlogs of callers on hold “brings the system down”.
She acknowledged this was “not ideal”. Caliskan said her constituents call it “appalling”. Lloyd Hatton (Labour) said HMRC’s services were “completely broken”.
The panel agreed to look at whether they could implement a warning for customers to tell them they would be cut off after 70 minutes. Lloyd added that a callback system “will be part of our requirements” when HMRC moves to a new platform.
Caliskan said issues with navigating HMRC’s digital services were partly to blame for long telephone queues, saying: “this idea that people are hanging on for hours with HMRC just for the fun of it when actually they could just go to digital services is not quite the accurate picture is it?”
“Being cut off is not just bad customer service,” she added. “It is an organization that is, deliberately it seems, trying to put you off from ever phoning HMRC again.”
Harra gave “a categorical reassurance” that that is not HMRC’s motivation. But “the simple fact is that in recent years we have not had sufficient resources to handle all of the contact that we receive, and therefore we have to try to reduce the avoidable contact by, for example, encouraging customers to do things online for themselves, and also try to prioritise the contact that we do deal with”.
Lloyd said HMRC are “constantly tweaking our digital services based on customer feedback”, with Harra adding: “We have not had sufficient resources to handle all of the contact that we receive, and therefore we have to try to reduce the avoidable contact by, for example, encouraging customers to do things online for themselves, and also try to prioritise the contact that we do deal with”.
Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat) said research has found that HMRC advisers have not complied with procedures in a third of calls, and asked why staff without the required level of proficiency were permitted to answer calls.
Lloyd said many of these were new or temporary staff in training and she was “confident” that levels would improve in the next report. She added that advice results in 97% of customers paying the right amount of tax.
Phoneline closures
While Harra told the committee that there are “no plans” to close helplines again, he was unable to offer a guarantee when pressed. However, he said that while he was in charge there would be no closures of helplines. He steps down from his role in March.
On the decision to close HMRC helplines in March, which was reversed the following day, Hatton said: “Surely you must accept that this one day car crash has done lasting damage to the credibility of HMRC.”
Harra admitted that earlier pilots of helpline closures revealed “a high degree of scepticism about whether people would be able to get the services they needed”. However, he added: “Given the position we were in at that time, if we had done nothing, we were going to get levels of demand that we simply could not service.”
Harra said he provides “advice and options”, but “the choices ultimately are for ministers”. Asked if they made the wrong choice, he added: “That’s not for me to say. Clearly the decision was changed pretty quickly, so a different judgment was reached very quickly.”
Harra said HMRC have “actually struggled” to find an evidential link between customer service and tax compliance, which would help with calls for extra funding. “It would be an extra way of persuading the Treasury that it is something to invest in, if we could show that there are tax revenues at stake,” he said. “It’s actually very difficult to prove evidentially.”
“I agree of course that the service levels that we gave in the last couple of years and in the first half of this year, are far, far below the levels that we would want to give, and I can understand why customers are dissatisfied with that, and I am dissatisfied with that as well,” Harra continued.
Digitalisation
Harra said 70% of all interactions with HMRC are now digital, with the figure close to 100% in some areas, such as employers PAYE.
However, he said the move towards digitialisation was being held back by both a lack of awareness and a lack of confidence.
“There is some unawareness of the extent of our digital services,” he said. “We currently have a campaign going on, which started on 4 November, to increase awareness of our digital services, particularly our mobile app. To some extent, I think it is also a lack of confidence, because tax can be complicated. We know that customers like reassurance.”
Clive Betts (Labour), who chaired the meeting in the absence of Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, asked why customers can do VAT registration online but are often unable to monitor the progress of this. Harra acknowledged there is no “track your parcel” type service, but added: “If it is something that will significantly reduce avoidable contact, it will be prioritised in our investment plan.” Digitalisation “is increasingly about improving existing services rather than extending them”, he continued.
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