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The average waiting time for a call at HM Revenue and Customs has increased by more than 350% in five years, with more and more people not being contacted or having their calls cut off, according to an official report which says the public is “frustrating “.
The National Audit Office (NAO) stated that the quality of customer service provided by HMRC had been “well below” the levels expected in recent years and that its phone lines in particular were “not delivering”.
The public spending watchdog’s report comes in less than three months similarly damning findings by another official body, Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. The findings may have helped the Treasury’s announcement this week of £51 million in funding “so HMRC staff can answer more calls and help customers over the phone”.
The NAO said HMRC’s performance on its phone lines “continues to decline”, with the department answering just two-thirds (67.2%) of callers’ attempts to speak to an adviser in the first 11 months of 2023-24 . fiscal year. That’s down from 77% two years earlier and well below the target of 85%.
Those who contacted an adviser waited an average of nearly 23 minutes in 2023-24 – a sharp increase from an average of five minutes in 2018-19.
Meanwhile, the report revealed that more taxpayers who are waiting to speak to someone end their calls with HMRC if the department thinks it is the kind of inquiry that can be dealt with online.
The tax office is trying to cope with demand by encouraging more customers to turn first to its digital services so that requests can be resolved quickly and easily online. But “fiscal resistance” has drawn more people into the tax system as individuals’ tax affairs become more complex – for example because they held more than one job or worked as a freelancer – the report said.
Digital services are better suited to direct requests and accounting for changes in customers’ circumstances, the authors said.
Taxpayers spent a cumulative equivalent of 798 years (7 million hours) waiting to speak to an adviser in 2022-23 – more than double the 3.2 million hours spent waiting in 2019-20.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “HMRC’s telephone and correspondence services have been below target service levels for far too long.”
It added that while many of its digital services were performing well, “they have not made enough of a difference to customers, some of whom have been caught in a downward spiral of pressure and service cuts”.
The consumer body Which? said the report “paints a sad picture of a service in serious decline”, while the Taxpayers’ Alliance said the situation would improve if ministers ordered civil servants who had been allowed to work from home to “get back behind their desks are”.
In response, HMRC accepted that customer service standards relating to its phone lines were “still not where we want them to be”, but added: “We are making serious progress in our efforts to improve customer service and additional funding confirmed by the government this week.”
A spokesman said: “Millions more people used our highly rated online services last year, saving them waiting on the phone and freeing up our advisers to deal with those people who need extra support.”
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