Around 40 HM Revenue and Customs jobs are at risk in the first wave of redundancies triggered by the tax authority's plan to drastically reduce its number of offices.
Late last year, the department announced a wide-ranging programme of office closures, which will eventually see the tax authority cut its network of 170 sites to just 13 regional centres.
The first sites are earmarked for closure in 2016/17, and more than 2,000 staff likely to be affected by the first set of moves to larger, regional hubs have, been engaged in one-to-one talks with management about relocation since February.
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A source familiar with the process told Civil Service World that around 200-300 HMRC staff had opted to take up the offer of voluntary exit during that process.
More than 40 staff for whom relocation was not possible or who turned down voluntary exit are now subject to a formal 90-day consultation period, which opened on Monday and could result in compulsory redundancies.
It is understood that staff affected by the latest downsizing were informed late last week that their roles were now at risk, and that the process impacts on civil servants at all grades. The sites affected include Bedford, Chatham, Chesterfield, Coleraine, Edinburgh, Finchley, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Norwich, Plymouth, Rayleigh, Romford, St Austell, Surbiton, Taunton, Walsall, Wick, and Woolwich.
PCS, the largest of the civil service unions, is already angered at what it sees as a lack of engagement from HMRC before triggering the 90-day talks.
A briefing circulated to PCS members, and seen by CSW, says the department has "failed to meet basic procedural requirements at the start of the process", meaning the union lacks "the precise details of either the individuals who are at risk or what steps have already been taken to keep them in the department".
The decision of HMRC management to begin the three-month consultation period does mean, however, that any staff who are made redundant are set to exit the civil service on current redundancy terms, rather than the reduced terms currently being drawn up by the Cabinet Office in its shake-up of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme.
PCS is currently sitting out talks on that wider civil service redundancy pay overhaul, having refused to agree to the Cabinet Office's conditions for participating.
However, the union says it will take part in the HMRC talks to avoid management having a "completely free-hand in deciding whether the at-risk staff were made redundant or not".
In August last year the tax authority announced that 200 separate, administrative-level roles were at risk, with compulsory redundancies subsequently handed to many of those staff.
Announcing the office closure programme, dubbed "Building Our Future" last last year, HMRC said it expected 90% of its current workforce to "either work in a regional centre or see out their career in an HMRC office"
HMRC chief executive Jon Thompson last week unveiled one of those hubs, HMRC's new centre in Croydon, which will eventually be home to around 2,500 staff.
"By bringing various teams across HMRC together and investing in skills, career development, sophisticated IT and data analytics, we will increase our effectiveness in providing modern customer services and cracking down on tax cheats," Thompson said