HM Revenue and Customs has set itself the goal of shearing more than £200m from its running costs over the next year, as the tax authority updated its plan for the parliament.
HMRC has been asked to save £717m a year by the end of 2019 to 2020, vowing to achieve this through increased digitalisation of tax collection and operating with a "smaller but more highly skilled workforce". The taxman is also embarking on a major programme of office closures, in favour of a move to larger regional hubs.
The organisation has this week published the latest version of its Single Departmental Plan, the new documents required by every government department to demonstrate how they are delivering on ministerial commitments under the spending settlements agreed with the Treasury at last year's Spending Review.
Single Departmental Plans not intended to give public the full picture, says government's lead non-exec
Government unveils long-awaited "Single Departmental Plans" in drive to match resources with priorities
The latest iteration of the SDP says HMRC will aim to make £203m in "sustainable cost savings" in the current financial year, while the department also sets a range of new targets for improving customer service and staff engagement, both viewed as sticking points for the organisation.
Staff engagement at HMRC is some 14 points below the Whitehall average, according to the latest annual Civil Service People Survey, and the revised SDP says HMRC wants to improve employee engagement "each and every year". It promises to hit the civil service-wide engagement average of 58%, although no date is given for achieving this.
It also pledges to increase the percentage of the workforce who feel they have "the skills required to do their job effectively", again with the aim of reaching the civil service average. According to the latest HMRC survey, just 56% of HMRC staff currently feel they have the right skills for the job – some 13 points off the civil service average.
On the customer service front, with HMRC says it wants to see public calls to its helplines answered, on average, within six minutes, and it pledges to have 85% of public call attempts handled by HMRC representatives by this time next year.
The tax authority came under fire from the National Audit Office on Wednesday over a dip in its customer service levels during 2014-15, which the spending watchdog said had been exacerbated by the timing of staff cuts.
According to figures in the latest National Audit Office report, HMRC call waits were hovering around the five-minute mark in January of this year, a marked improvement on performance at the end of last year. But the spending watchdog's report shows that 72% of calls to HMRC were handled in 2015-16, some way off HMRC's new target for the year ahead.
HMRC also commits to answering 95% of online customer queries within 7 days, and says it wants to see an 80% customer satisfaction for its digital services over the course of the year.
The tax authority's latest updates put more flesh on the bones of its Single Departmental Plan, and come as the government's lead non-executive director confirmed that the public versions of the documents – which have been criticised as insufficiently detailed by both the Institute for Government and FDA Union – are designed to give "top level" summaries of much more rigorous internal plans drawn up by departments.
“Not all the metrics are going to be published, just as I wouldn’t publish all the metrics of a PLC,” Sir Ian Cheshire told MPs this week.
“Frankly it would have been overkill and realistically what you measure internally and control for, you don’t necessarily want to publish every single piece.”