Lord Oates – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Oates on 2015-11-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce HMRC’s delays in answering telephone enquiries.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) recognise that their customer service has not been good enough, and have taken major steps to improve, including recruiting 3,000 new staff into customer service roles, available outside normal office hours when many of their customers choose to call. This year has seen their biggest-ever training programme as HMRC build customer support teams that can move across a wide range of work according to customer demand. By the end of December 1,600 existing staff will be trained to cover a wider range of work. Hundreds of these people are already taking calls. These improvements have started to make a difference. Last month, HMRC answered more than 80 per cent of calls, and average queue times are now around 10 minutes or less.