Research and analysis

Supplementary update on how HMRC has used the findings from the research

Published 11 August 2021

In Spring 2020 HMRC received the results from qualitative research with customers who used voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations to help them in their interactions with HMRC.

As part of its commitment to serve customers who need extra help, HMRC provides over £1.6million annually to VCS organisations. This funding recognises that not everyone is comfortable, confident, or willing to reveal their situation to HMRC and they may prefer support from other organisations who work in partnership with HMRC to help them get their tax and claims right.

VCS organisations offer frontline support to people who need help with their tax affairs, including tax credits, child benefit, debt owed to HMRC, Self-Assessment and Pay As You Earn (PAYE). HMRC also provides help through an in-house specialist team, the Extra Support Team, who work closely with the VCS. The Extra Support team receive over 6,000 referrals from VCS organisations each year.

The research was carried out using telephone and face-to-face interviews with 45 customers who had used VCS organisations in the last 6 months. The aim was to understand their support needs, their experience of using a VCS organisation and for HMRC to look for better ways to support customers who needed extra help. HMRC applied the insight from this research straight away, using it to shape the support services and inform the grant funding programme for VCS partners. Subsequent HMRC activity includes:

• creation of the HMRC’s principles of support for customers who need extra help which was published alongside the new HMRC Charter on 5 November 2020. The principles commit the department to provide timely and appropriate support for all customers who may need extra help
• work on enhancing the capability of all staff, from policy design through to delivery and operations, by ensuring people have the right skills they need to deliver the expectations set out in the HMRC Charter. HMRC has been developing tools to help individuals identify the skills and learning that’s relevant to their role
• introduction of a grant funding programme worth £4.98 million (£1.66 million per year) from 2021 to 2024 to VCS organisations who can provide tailored help and support to HMRC customers. The grant funding programme has a strong focus on reaching out to ‘hard to reach’ customers and where possible restoring their confidence and ability to engage or re-engage with HMRC directly
• ongoing work to establish the role of the VCS within the tax eco-system – looking specifically at the end-to-end customer journey and the different types of support provided by different organisations. This exercise will help HMRC to identify ways to further develop the VCS service offer to customer who need extra help
• continued development and internal awareness of HMRC’s Extra Support Teams so that customers identified as needing extra help are quickly transferred to Extra Support advisers, who have the skills and time to handle queries. These advisers put in place appropriate reasonable adjustments required and remain the customer’s point of contact until they have resolved the customer’s tax or benefit queries. The HMRC Extra Support Team supported over 99,000 customers in 2019 to 2020 and has continued to support customers through the pandemic. Customer experience surveys regularly shows 98 to 100% satisfaction with the HMRC’s Extra Support Team’s service
• rolled out a training programme and improved guidance for HMRC customer service colleagues and compliance officers to enable them to better identify when to provide extra help
• improvements to HMRC digital services to ensure they are accessible and that alternatives are available to those who are digitally excluded. More than 66,000 people signed up to take part in HMRC digital user research, this is the largest panel in government. More than 3,500 have said they use assistive technologies. The valuable feedback the panel provides helps HMRC create products and services designed to meet user needs
• improved HMRC communications have taken on board stakeholder feedback and applies the latest research which has been used to create toolkits and writing principles. This has included improvements to the language and tone of standard compliance letters and key factsheets. Over 800 of HMRC’s most used letters and forms have been improved, making them more accessible, so that customers know what they need to do, and what they might need to help them. Over 1000 HMRC debt management letters have been reviewed to ensure they are clear and signpost to appropriate support, as customers’ circumstances may have changed due to the pandemic
• ongoing work with the debt advice sector so that support is offered to HMRC customers in financial hardship. At the end of 2019 to 2020 HMRC had £2.3 billion in time to pay arrangements in place, supporting 648,000 customers. HMRC is committed to being fair with all people who owe money and this is reflected in the low level of complaints received compared to the size of debt pursued. In 2019 to 2020 HMRC received 13% less complaints than the previous year