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TW Ed is wary of the proposals to close HMRC Enquiry Centres in favour of telephone support and personal visits.

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Enquiry Centre Closures - There's No Going Back!

HM Revenue & Customs has announced that it intends to trial the closure of certain of its Enquiry Centres and replace them with a combination of telephone support and face-to-face visits. As a footnote to the announcement, this trial is to last little more than two months and - "if successful" - will be implemented nationwide across the rest of HMRC's remaining c300 Enquiry Centres, between February and May next year.

Oh dear - but perhaps not entirely unexpected.

A few points that spring to mind:

• It is hard to see that a trial period of roughly two months can yield meaningful results in relation to what is clearly an annual cycle.
• Given the logistics that (I can only guess) must be involved, this is a process that cannot be implemented in the 8 months between May 2013 and February 2014 - assuming that HMRC is able to assimilate the data immediately and it is only publication that waits 'til July; otherwise it's 6 months.
• So it seems incredible that it could be dependent on the outcome of the trial.

HMRC's Chief Executive is reported to have said, "This new service will enable us to tailor that help in a way that works better for customers and is more flexible and affordable than the service we currently provide." If memory serves, telephone support and home visits are hardly new developments for HMRC. The notion that HMRC will also provide expert advisors on the phone, trained to deal with people who need extra support", also sits rather ill: shouldn't HMRC's telephone staff already have that training and expertise?

Much of the announcement focuses on the cost savings for taxpayers, and for HM Revenue & Customs, and this is of course where it's really at: HMRC estimates that the 'new' service (or perhaps more accurately the cessation of the current service) will save HMRC roughly £13 million a year. Or to put it another way, about 25 pence per taxpayer.

Many taxpayers and practitioners will already be aware that a great many enquiry centres' opening times have been cut significantly over the last few years and it is therefore hardly surprising that the corresponding cost of maintaining premises "full time" has rendered this seemingly a poor use of taxpayers' money. The real question is whether or not enquiry centres' hours have been cut due to a lack of demand, or whether there is now no demand because they are hardly ever open.

If these changes were to result in a real, tangible improvement to HMRC's level of service to taxpayers then that would be most welcome. But, given HMRC's widely reported shortcomings in terms of its telephone service, it would also come as a surprise. Cost-saving measures are hardly renowned for improving service levels.

To me, it is the idea that HMRC seems to be happy with the idea of providing more funding to the voluntary sector that sits worst: surely the people best equipped to provide expert tax advice are existing HMRC officers? Are there really sufficient volunteers with sufficient spare capacity (and with the resources to train them) that they can fill the void? (Are they not doing enough already?)

I suspect that any enquiry centre operating at just one day open a week or similar is already "past the point of no return" from a financial cost/benefit perspective. I suspect also that once those Enquiry Centres are closed, and no matter how bad (or good) the alternative turns out to be, the cost of bringing Centres back into use will be insurmountable.

Regards all,

TW Ed