Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
3rd Report - HMRC Customer Service and Accounts
Published 22 Jan 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee HMRC Customer Service and Accounts 2023-24 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
HMRC’s digital services have not sufficiently reduced demand on the phone and HMRC has failed to prioritise the resources needed to sustain an appropriate standard of telephone service. HMRC has been working to become a ‘digital-first’ organisation since 2010 and hopes to replace traditional forms of contact with digital services. However, telephone 3 demand has remained high, with 37 million telephone calls in 2023–24. HMRC says it has not had enough resources to deal with all the contact it has been receiving with, for example, 3 million more income taxpayers in the last two years as a result of freezing tax thresholds. In May 2024, HMRC received £51 million additional funding to cover approximately 1,500 staff for 2024–25 to bring HMRC’s customer service to target levels. However, we are concerned that performance will deteriorate again if HMRC struggles to meet further increases in demand from customers. HMRC plans to publish a ‘digital roadmap’ in Spring 2025 to set out the digital services it is expecting to develop and the investment it needs. recommendation HMRC should ensure it allocates sufficient resources to customer service now and in the future to meet its performance targets. It should establish “guard rails” to protect services. Where service levels fall more than five percentage points below target levels this should trigger a corrective response, with additional resources deployed if needed.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 3rd Report - HMRC Customer Service and Accounts (HC 347), 22 January 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Third Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Third report from Session 2024-25
Published 6 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations, with target implementation dates ranging from March 2026 to March 2028 for several, but disagrees with reinstating a call waiting time target and with the proposed resourcing "guard rails" and corrective trigger.
- On a call waiting time target, the government "disagrees". It says ASA "remains a key performance metric" and that its Adviser Attempts Handled measure and customer satisfaction metrics give "a more rounded view" of the experience for all callers.
- The government agrees that call waiting estimates, no cut-offs without warning and a callback service should be required in a new telephone service, with a target implementation date of March 2027. It says the new Contact Service platform procurement will launch in spring 2025.
- The government disagrees with setting a trigger when service levels fall more than five percentage points below target. It says HMRC is "always reviewing plans and forecasts of demand" and adjusting resourcing "day-by-day and week-by-week".
- On tax debt, the government agrees, and HMRC "will respond to the Committee in September 2025" with its expectations for the debt balance by 2029-30 and plans for older debts, allowing for the outcome of Spending Review Phase 2.