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A new, flexible support service for 1.5 million customers who need extra help with their tax affairs will be piloted by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) from June.

The new service will provide mobile, one-to-one support in a range of convenient locations, including a person’s own home or business. It will also provide expert advisors on the phone, trained to deal with people who need extra support, to help a caller until the issue is resolved. HMRC will also make more funding and support available for voluntary sector organisations to help them to deal with customers who turn to them for help.

Lin Homer, HMRC’s Chief Executive, said:

“HMRC is dedicated to providing help to customers who need it. 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.

We will give a more specialised phone service for customers whose affairs can be resolved over the telephone, and face-to-face help to those who need it, visiting them at a place convenient to them, saving them both travel and time. HMRC will provide a more modern and accessible service that will target the right support to customers who need it, where and when they want it.”

HMRC has calculated that the new service will save customers almost £12 million a year in lost time and travel costs, and will be more than £13 million a year cheaper to run than the current service, as a result of the closure of the Enquiry Centre network in 2014. Face-to-face support will be provided to suit the customers who need it – no longer constrained by the fixed location and limited opening times of Enquiry Centres.

A consultation on the new service was launched on 14 March 2013 and will run until 24 May, with the results to be published by the end of July 2013. The Enquiry Centres that will be closed in the pilot are Alnwick, Bishop Auckland, Bridlington, Hexham, Darlington, Durham, Middlesbrough, Morpeth, Newcastle, Scarborough, Stockton, Sunderland and York. If successful, HMRC will implement this new service across the UK between February and May 2014 and close the remaining Enquiry Centres.