Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 4
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
HMRC does not provide an efficient means for taxpayers to communicate digitally with HMRC. In 2022–23, HMRC received 22 million items of correspondence, including physical post and forms and interactive forms. Approximately 70% of this comes in through the post. Postal correspondence, as well as some electronic correspondence, requires scanning, manual entry into HMRC’s systems, or both. In the past HMRC has faced large backlogs in processing its correspondence, clearing only 45.5% in 2021–22 within 15 working days of receipt. HMRC’s performance improved to 76.3% in 2023–24 but was still below its target of 80%. HMRC also posts a lot of correspondence itself, spending £68 million on postage and print costs in 2022–23. HMRC said it has used emails with customers sparingly due to security concerns, but it has made little progress in developing alternative secure ways for customers to share information with it electronically. It acknowledges it is clearly behind many other organisations in providing the ability for customers to securely message HMRC digitally. It says that it envisages customers doing this more through the HMRC App and the Personal Tax Account, and is seeking investment for this development as part of its ‘digital roadmap’. recommendation As part of its digital roadmap, HMRC should prioritise introducing systems for customers to submit files and send secure messages electronically to HMRC. This should enable savings which can be recycled into improving its service.
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.