Corporate report

Part 1: our customer service and policy work

Published 29 January 2021

How our customer service and policy work complies with section 149 of the Equality Act.

HMRC’s customer equality objectives 2016 to 2020

We published HMRC’s equality objectives for 2016 to 2020 on 12 May 2016. They provide a baseline from which we measure improvements in our performance and advance equality.

Customer equality objectives are:

1. customer understanding: to further develop our understanding about the impact of our services on customers and identify more clearly those who need enhanced support
2. digital services: to provide digital services that are accessible and usable by the widest possible range of customers 3 customer service: to ensure that our public sector duty is reflected in appropriate HMRC policies, processes, projects and training

Revised equality objectives for 2020 to 2024 are being published at the same time as this report.

HMRC’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2016 to 2020, is built around 4 themes:

• representation
• inclusion
• capability
• customers

It guides the work we do to help maximise the performance of all our people, and in doing so, enables us to respond more effectively to the needs of our diverse customer base.

Summary of our progress against each customer equality objective

We will further develop our understanding of our customers

We demonstrated this by:

• monitoring customer complaints to identify trends, helping us to understand how we can support customers who need extra help. This means improving our understanding of our customers by conducting research, to find out what customers find difficult and what we can do to make matters better – such as reviewing how customers use our services and processes and how compliance issues have an impact on those that need extra support
• reviewing our stakeholder engagement to improve its effectiveness and continuing to seek feedback proactively on issues faced by the customer groups represented by our external stakeholders, to improve both the accessibility of HMRC services and the overall experience for customers

We will provide digital services that are accessible and usable by the widest possible range of customers

We demonstrated this by:

• offering a range of support options where digital services are not accessible for customers’ such as Trusted Helper, where a family member or friend can liaise with us on behalf of the customer. We also provide home visits for those that are unable to access a device or phone although these have been suspended during the coronavirus pandemic
• setting a minimum accessibility standard in the published Terms of use between HMRC and software developers, requiring developers to ‘meet W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at a minimum level of AA if your software’s web-based, or W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) guidelines for mobile software’ in order to ensure that available software will be compatible with a range of assistive technology
• working through issues with our Additional Needs Working Group and other stakeholders on the provision of accessible digital services – this includes continued work with third-party software developers to make sure the software they develop is compatible with assistive technologies

We will continue to improve customer service

We demonstrated this by:

• making sure customers get the support they need, at the right time, and that our staff have the training to help them treat customers sensitively providing support or reasonable adjustments as required
• developing and monitoring a programme of education for our people, to ensure colleagues understand their equality obligations and the reasonable adjustments that they can offer customers
• building on recommendations from the Customer Experience Committee to improve the customer experience HMRC delivers to all customers

Your Charter

HMRC deals with the tax and payments affairs of almost every business and individual in the UK.

Your Charter (‘the Charter’) sets out what our customers can expect from us – and what we expect from them – as we transform our services and ways of working.

Your rights - what you can expect from us	Your obligations - what we expect from you
Respect you and treat you as honest	Be honest and respect our staff
Provide a helpful, efficient and effective service	Work with us to get things right
Be professional and act with integrity	Find out what you need to do and keep us informed
Protect your information and respect your privacy	Keep accurate records and protect your information
Accept that someone else can represent you	Know what your representative does on your behalf
Deal with complaints quickly and fairly	Respond in good time
Tackle those who bend or break the rules	Take reasonable care to avoid mistakes

It is a legal requirement under the Finance Act 2009, section 92. The legislation states that the Charter ‘must include standards of behaviour and values to which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will aspire when dealing with people in the exercise of their functions’. Legislation also says the Charter must be reviewed regularly and revisions published.

HMRC began work to review the Charter in September 2019 and ran a 6-month public consultation from February to August 2020. The review consisted of consultation with customers, staff and external stakeholders. The Charter will reflect feedback from the consultation. HMRC’s key principles of support for customers who need extra help will be set out alongside the Charter.

The responsibility for monitoring HMRC’s performance against the Charter sits with a sub-committee of the HMRC board, the Customer Experience Committee.

The role of the Customer Experience Committee

HMRC’s Customer Experience Committee supports and challenges HMRC on customer experience related issues to help the department deliver on its strategic objectives.

The committee’s work programme includes advising on developing a customer focused culture, introducing customer experience performance measures and addressing the needs of customers who need extra support. The committee members include a mixture of HMRC’s Executive Committee, HMRC non-executive directors and independent advisers who are customer experience experts drawn from the private sector.

The role the of committee is to provide counsel, scrutiny and challenge. It does not have decision-making authority. The committee meets at least 4 times a year, reporting to the board through its chair at HMRC board meetings.

The committee assists the commissioners of HMRC in their statutory obligation to report each year, on the extent to which HMRC has demonstrated the standards of behaviour and values included in the Charter. It also draws on feedback from key independent stakeholder groups to publish its findings in the Charter Annual Report.

Customer equality and impacts

HMRC continues to work with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, helping the department comply with equality legislation, provide the best possible service for people in protected equality groups and drive forward improvements in customer service.

The Customer Impact and Equalities Team (CIET) in HMRC is responsible for assuring equality impact assessments for change projects and policy across the department.

It provides advice on how to identify the impact on customers and any mitigating actions and review all equality impact assessments, to ensure HMRC has fully considered equality in an appropriate and proportionate way. The team works with policy professionals across HMRC to ensure that colleagues have training, and awareness of their Equality obligations.

CIET also chairs the Additional Needs Working Group, comprising a wide range of external stakeholders and senior internal colleagues. The group’s purpose is to:

• support and challenge HMRC on equality issues and help the department deliver on its strategic objectives and public sector equality duties
• explore ways to assist those customers who need extra support to use HMRC services and progress the removal of barriers to enable customers to interact successfully with us.
• share expertise and best practice for with additional needs and monitor the impact of HMRC’s strategic direction on them.
• understand the concerns of customers who need additional support, and work toward ensuring that these are reflected in the development of HMRC services

HMRC has also considered the approach for supporting customers who need extra help, and customers with mental health conditions. Alongside the updated HMRC Charter, we also published HMRC’s Principles of support for customers who need extra help, which have been developed to promote and signpost the additional support that HMRC can provide.

HMRC continues to work in partnership with the Royal Association for the Deaf to offer British Sign Language (BSL) translation services, which enables HMRC to hold live conversations with deaf customers who use BSL and it has increased the number of subtitled BSL videos for HMRC’s YouTube channel.

The Budget process

The tax information and impact notes serves as a record of having had ‘due regard’ to the effect of any decision making on those with a protected characteristic under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

Additionally, HMRC shows compliance with Northern Ireland Equality Scheme (section 75 and schedule 9 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998), by publishing all equality impact assessments for major policy changes administered by HMRC, which affect Northern Ireland.

These assessments explicitly set out the impacts on all protected groups. HMRC also provide a summary of the equality analysis of policies that specifically impact on Northern Ireland, such as workforce change proposals, via section 75 annual reports.

How HMRC supports customers who need extra help

We recognise that some customers will always need extra help, but others may become vulnerable at a certain point in their lives due to difficult circumstances. This may include personal matters, the environment in which they are working or earning, possibly combined with their interactions with HMRC.

HMRC has identified how we can help to make sure that customers who need extra help, receive the right level of support at the right time while engaging with HMRC.

Calls and correspondence with HMRC are monitored for certain customer characteristics which include confidence, access, emotional state, mental health, capability, complexity and disability.

We have put processes in place to transfer customers who exhibit any of these characteristics to Extra Support advisers who have the additional skills, knowledge, empathy and equipment to handle queries at the customer’s pace. They will remain the customer’s point of contact throughout, providing reasonable adjustments, as required.

The Extra Support team tailors assistance around individual customer needs, providing a personalised service either by phone, post, or webchat.

Before the coronavirus restrictions came into place, the team provided a face-to-face service right across the UK and could meet customers in over 300 locations including Jobcentre Plus offices and local authority locations, all of which have Wi-Fi. For those customers who did not live near a venue or were unable to travel, Extra Support advisers could visit them at their home.

Despite face-to-face appointments being paused during the COVID-19 lockdown required by the government, the Extra Support team was still able to support customers during the pandemic, while working from home.

In 2019 to 2020, our Extra Support team:

• supported more than 93,000 customers
• received more than 54,000 calls from customers transferred from general helplines and the voluntary and community sector
• resolved queries from more than 22,000 customer letters
• supported more than 15,000 customers face-to-face in community venues or in their homes

We have been extending the Extra Support service across the department during the year and providing support for a broader range of services, including PAYE, Self-Assessment, VAT, tax credits and Child Benefit.

HMRC also introduced a dedicated Compliance Extra Support Team in January 2020. This team provides advice to compliance caseworkers and helps them to support customers who require extra help. We tailor our approach to resolve their tax affairs at the earliest opportunity, considering the customer’s needs.

Supporting customers in financial hardship

HMRC’s Debt Management area work in partnership with Money and Pensions Service and have launched a new debt advice referral service to support 24,000 tax credits customers in short-term financial hardship. There are about 85,000 HMRC customers in problem debt and the service will be expanded next year to better support them.

Where we encounter financial hardship or vulnerable customers, our Debt Management officers are trained to refer cases to the Extra Support Team. We also support customers in vulnerable circumstances and those in temporary hardship who need more time to pay their debt. At the end of 2019 to 2020 we had £2.3 billion in Time to Pay arrangements, supporting 648,000 taxpayers.

Grant funding and engagement with the voluntary and community sectors

We have continued to work with the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to help provide a full and joined-up service to people who need extra support. VCS organisations provide tax and benefit-related support services to a range of individuals, including those with disabilities, mental health or learning difficulties, those on low income, older people, carers and migrants.

We commissioned research in 2019 to improve our understanding of the support needs of customers who use the VCS and their experience of receiving support. We are using these findings to make sure we work as effectively as possible with them and will be publishing the report next year.

We recognise that support needs can be complex and customer needs can change, due to increasing or difficult life events, such as debt, bereavement, illness or domestic violence. Some customers also face multiple issues.

Examples of these situations include individuals suffering from debt who experience depression and anxiety, or individuals losing their sight as they grow older, and who also experience cognitive decline, affecting their ability to understand or deal with processes and information.

We have been reviewing HMRC’s grant funding programme to support VCS organisations to:

• help people use HMRC’s digital services
• explore how we can use data and insights from VCS to help us understand the wider set of barriers customers experience when accessing HMRC services - making sure we don’t exclude any groups of users, this being both online and offline journeys
• provide advice and support to those customers who, for various reasons, need extra help at some point in their lives when interacting with HMRC, such as the elderly, people with mental health conditions, those in financial hardship, customers who are digitally excluded, among others
• help HMRC identify and reduce communication barriers for customers, so we can improve the customer experience and HMRC’s efficiency and productivity

In 2019 to 2020, we were able to award £1.66 million in grant funding to help 14 organisations support those customers who find it difficult interacting with HMRC.

VCS organisations directly supported people with their tax and benefits through telephony, face-to-face meetings before coronavirus restrictions, via their websites and through digital training. HMRC helped the organisations with the provision of materials for advisers assisting customers on low incomes who needed extra help.

HMRC has also continued to work with a broader network of VCS representatives, including unfunded organisations. Through regular meetings, they provide us with insight on issues that our customers are facing, test guidance before it is issued and give us an indication of how messages will be received by our customer groups, as well as raising issues from their interactions with customers.

All of this enables us to improve our services for customers. We also know that some people supported by the VCS may lack trust or confidence in dealing with HMRC directly, and others may be in dispute with HMRC, so the VCS organisations are a vital part of HMRC’s strategy to support customers, rebuilding their confidence to work directly with us where possible, but also providing that ongoing support where necessary.

We continue to explore how our financial support and partnership activities with the VCS and agents can have the maximum impact in assisting our customers who need extra support.

Individual Stakeholder Forum

The Individual Stakeholder Forum is our main external consultation forum for the VCS and other organisations representing individual customers. It helps us to make sure our actions continue to reflect our diverse customer base.

Meetings feature a mix of presentations from HMRC policy and operational representatives and discussions on topical issues, changes in policy or process, or topics raised by members – HMRC field the appropriate subject matter experts for discussion with the forum.

Expanding accessibility options

In 2019 to 2020, our Extra Support team continued the partnership with the Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD) which enabled us to help 619 deaf customers with their tax affairs.

Our partnership with RAD ensures that HMRC makes information and advice more accessible for deaf customers in the UK. They can contact HMRC directly via the National Registers of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind people or British Sign Language/English interpreter using RAD’s Video Interpreting Service.

This gives instant access to registered, qualified interpreters via PC or tablet and produces HMRC-related content on YouTube in sign language. This service is also available for customers whose first language is not English and alternative arrangements can be made for a friend or family member to interpret or speak on their behalf when dealing with HMRC.

During 2019 to 2020, as part of a wider transformation programme, the Extra Support team introduced several new business areas to the services it covers, providing a more consistent service to RAD customers, as well as those who need extra help across many areas of HMRC:

• VAT
• Corporation Tax
• probate
• employer helpline
• Construction Industry Scheme
• payment enquiry line

These helplines are available to RAD via 3-way Skype calling, in addition to our existing helplines for taxes, tax credits and National Insurance. The only helpline that HMRC decided not to continue with, was for Inheritance Tax due to such low demand, however calls can still be arranged with a trained adviser if necessary. The most popular helplines are for taxes and tax credits.

Our Extra Support team continues to offer BSL interpreters to our deaf customers during face-to-face appointments at a convenient time and location at more than 300 venues across the UK. However, these were suspended due to the impact of the coronavirus restrictions. The team are hoping to review the situation in 2021 and continue to offer help with the assistance of RAD, as mentioned earlier.

Our Visually Impaired Media Unit (VIMU) has continued to meet customers’ requests for information in alternative formats. In 2019 to 2020, the unit converted over 41,000 documents into alternative formats, which included large print, Braille, audio, and plain text on CD.

The team has managed to continue its services during the COVID-19 pandemic. With most colleagues working from home from the week commencing 23 March 2020 – they were able to support the Job Retention Scheme and issued new documentation to customers that they needed for the support measure.

The VIMU looked at new ways of working so that we dealt appropriately with post received during lockdown and have still met deadlines, working in partnership with the Welsh Language Unit.

A major change during 2019 to 2020, was the move from Standard English Braille to Uniform English Braille. The Visually Impaired Media Unit worked closely with the Royal National Institute of Blind in order to achieve this – bringing HMRC up-to-date with the latest format.

The transition will make a difference to our blind customers who use our Braille services, as Uniform English Braille brings together several existing codes into one unified code, which includes the literacy, mathematics and computer codes.

Building inclusive and accessible services

We conduct regular user research throughout the development cycle of our products and services, to improve our understanding of the needs of all our customers. We build services that help those customers who have difficulties in accessing online services and provide further support to anyone that needs our help.

We continue our work to build a panel of user researchers and testers and now have the biggest panel in government. More than 66,000 people signed up to take part in user research and give us feedback on the services we are building. More than 3,500 have told us they use assistive technologies. We are making improvements to make it easier, and more inclusive, for everyone to sign-up to the panel.

There are many reasons why a customer might struggle to use an HMRC service. We are exploring ways to broaden our understanding and identify common barriers to accessing our services, how they might interlink with others and if these barriers are shared across different services.

We know not everyone will contact HMRC for support. Some people ask charities or other voluntary sector organisations for support and advice. We are continuously working alongside these stakeholders to better understand any barriers that customers experience, so we can improve the accessibility of our digital services.

Making Tax Digital and accessibility

HMRC is committed to ensuring everyone will have access to Making Tax Digital (MTD) services, including those with accessibility needs. To help us do this, we have worked closely with wide range of internal and external stakeholders. Our work included:

• setting out clearly to software developers the WCAG 2.1 AA standards we expect their MTD software to meet, asking them to declare that it complies and confirm the software can support people who have accessibility needs or use digital assistive technologies
• publishing details of MTD software on the find software that’s compatible with Making Tax Digital for VAT GOV.UK webpage, where users can search for accessible software that meets their needs. We added functionality for users searching for accessible products so it would only display the list of products that meet their requirements
• keeping regular contact with software developers working to improve their products through our Digital Relationship Manager network to ensure they get things right
• building productive, collaborative relationships with members of the Assisted Needs Working Group to ensure we are meeting user needs

Accessibility testing

We carry out usability testing to improve functionality and check the accessibility of our services under development.

In September 2018, the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations 2018 came into force. The legal framework requires all public sector websites and mobile applications to comply with these regulations. We have a thorough assurance process, including internal and external accessibility audits to check compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) is available if needed, a roadmap to state when any issues will be fixed and who to contact if you have a problem or want to make a complaint.

We continue to review our existing services to make sure they comply with the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations 2018 and ensure our mobile applications will comply by June 2021.

Customer communications

HMRC continually reviews its customer facing communications to make sure they are clear and easy to understand.

For example, this year we have made improvements to the language and tone of our standard compliance letters and have updated almost 400 key compliance products for language and tone. This includes our full range of factsheets and all letters we use when we open an enquiry, as well as the most commonly used penalty and information powers letters and forms.

We have also incorporated best practice into our COVID-19 letters, to make sure we are leading customers to the right help available.

We have improved signposting to further information, which lets people know how customers can find extra support on GOV.UK. The page makes it much clearer that HMRC can provide support to meet a broad range of customer needs, for example if you:

• have dyslexia, autism or cognitive difficulties
• have reduced mobility or physical disabilities
• have sensory disabilities, like a visual, hearing or speech impairment
• have mental health conditions, like depression, stress or anxiety
• are experiencing financial hardship, for example you cannot afford essentials like food, bills or rent
• are a victim of domestic abuse, including economic abuse
• are in hospital

We have now clearly signposted on GOV.UK the different ways to contact HMRC, for example, if you need to do any of the following:

• contact HMRC using textphone, webchat or BSL
• get information in a different format
• get help filling in forms
• ask for more time because of your circumstances
• get information in another language
• find out how to appoint someone to talk to HMRC on your behalf

We will continue to seek advice from external stakeholders on how we can improve our communications. We will explore further options such as YouTube videos, Twitter and media coverage to promote HMRC’s support for customers, as well as more detailed guidance on how to get help or support in Welsh or other languages.

Complaints

Although our aim is to get services right for our customers, we want to deliver an easy and accessible complaints process when people do experience difficulties. We want to reach the right outcome as soon as possible, acknowledging where we have made a mistake and seeking to learn from that feedback.

We operate a 2-tier internal complaints process which gives our customers the opportunity for a second independent review of their complaint. If a customer remains dissatisfied with our decision, they can refer their complaint to the independent Adjudicator’s Office and then to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

For 2019 to 2020, we received 65,625 new complaints, down by 6,013 compared to 2018 to 2019 and 44% of complaints were upheld by the Adjudicator’s Office, compared to 35% in the previous year. The increase in the percentage of complaints upheld coincides with the introduction in April 2019 of changes to the way that the Adjudicator’s Office investigate complaints.

They enabled more independent decision making – and enhanced their ability to hold HMRC to account when we did not put things right for customers. More details can be found in the Adjudicator’s Office 2019 to 2020 annual report.

In comparison to 2018 to 2019, new complaints have decreased by 8% at Tier 1, decreased by 15% at Tier 2 and decreased by 6% for cases requiring a decision at Adjudicator level. There were 7% of new complaints escalated from Tier 1 to Tier 2 and 16% escalated from Tier 2 to the Adjudicator.

Work with the Adjudicator

We have been working closely with the Adjudicator’s Office to implement best practice in relation to identifying and helping customers who need extra support. The Adjudicator is a member of the Customer Experience Committee and was also consulted on development of the new customer Charter and contributed to the Charter Annual Report.

Customers already have access to the Adjudicator and HMRC has been advising customers of their rights to raise their case with the Adjudicator if they are not satisfied with HMRC’s handling of their complaint. To increase the range of channels available for people to access the Adjudicator service, HMRC has developed a secure digital channel for customers to escalate their complaint. This was launched in December 2019.

We have been improving our internal mechanisms to respond to the issues the Adjudicator raises including the general learning from complaints.

A new Complaints Insight Board has been set up, with membership including the Adjudicator and the Head of Office. The board will oversee HMRC’s response to the recommendations included in the 2019 Adjudicator’s report.

Training and skills

Our customer facing colleagues are key to ensuring that we identify and support customers who need extra help. We have been reviewing our training and guidance to ensure our people have the skills to deliver our services and compliance activity in a customer-focused way. This includes equalities awareness and our ability to identify customers who need extra help.

In February and March 2020, we began the roll out of training on skills relating to the Charter.

We also supported the development of a cross government e-learning product to assist colleagues who are supporting those customers who communicate that they are likely to self-harm or take their own life.

This product is now live on the Civil Service-Learning website. Together with the new HMRC products and guidance, we are making sure our colleagues know how to respond appropriately to people who are threatening suicide or harm to themselves or others.

Supporting the wider community

We run several community programmes. Our highlights for 2019 to 2020 include:

• 4,497 days funded by HMRC for our people to assist schools, voluntary groups, charities and other good causes
• 3,000 of our people supported around 39,000 young people to take their first steps towards work, through our partnership with the Prince’s Trust that has been growing for more than 25 years
• 4,000 views on average, for HMRC’s YouTube animations that are part of our ‘Tax Facts’ tax education programme
• continuing to update and promote ‘Tax Facts’ in schools for young people and teachers and have developed our community of volunteers in regional centres
• more than £1 million charity funds raised and donated by our people, including more than £31,000 for our annual BBC Children in Need appeal and more than £585,000 donated by individual colleagues through Payroll Giving to around 880 of their own wide range of charities
• more than £25,000 raised for the Charity for Civil Servants by our people, helping HMRC to become the top-performing government department in the Million Mile Walking Challenge 2019, both for funds raised and colleagues taking part

Go straight to part 2: our people and values .