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| HMRC defends call waiting times of 47 minutes | |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| The boss of HM Customs and Revenue (HMRC) has defended its poor record on answering telephone calls. | |
| It follows a report from Citizens Advice, which said thousands of people were waiting 47 minutes to get their calls answered. | |
| "I don't think the overall trend is worsening," Lin Homer, HMRC's chief executive, told MPs. | |
| The National Audit Office (NAO) also said recently that too few calls were being answered within five minutes. | |
| "We aren't answering enough calls within five minutes, but we are now doing more 'once and done' calls," she said, meaning that taxpayers only needed to phone once. | |
| "We have already apologised for what we see as a failure in our performance at the end of last year, and the first couple of months of this year," she told members of the Public Accounts Committee. | |
| In June this year, she apologised for the service, which she admitted was "not up to scratch", after figures showed that a quarter of calls went unanswered. | |
| As a result of "once and done" calls, she said that some conversations were getting longer. And she said HMRC was "aiming to get better". | |
| The total number of calls answered by HMRC fell from 79% in 2013/14, to 72.5% in 2014/15, according to the NAO. | |
| And it said that just 39% of calls were being answered within five minutes. | |
| 'Paying the price' | |
| The Citizens Advice study showed that over the last year, 11,500 frustrated callers turned to Twitter to complain. | |
| On average, those who tweeted had to wait an average of 47 minutes before their call was answered. | On average, those who tweeted had to wait an average of 47 minutes before their call was answered. |
| HMRC said the survey was "unscientific" and "out of date". | |
| In one case, someone tweeted that they had tried to get through to HMRC on four occasions and waited an hour each time. | |
| Citizens Advice calculated that hanging on the line to HMRC for 47 minutes would, in many cases, cost consumers £4.66 in call charges. | |
| "People are paying the price for not getting through to HMRC," said Gillian Guy, the chief executive of Citizens Advice. | "People are paying the price for not getting through to HMRC," said Gillian Guy, the chief executive of Citizens Advice. |
| "From fines for not completing a tax return in time, to under or overpayments for tax credits, people can be left out of pocket because they cannot speak to HMRC on the phone." | "From fines for not completing a tax return in time, to under or overpayments for tax credits, people can be left out of pocket because they cannot speak to HMRC on the phone." |
| Improvements | |
| However, HMRC said it had recently taken on an extra 3,000 staff to try and lessen the delays. | |
| "We are sorry that some customers have struggled to get hold of us, but this unscientific and out-of-date survey of tweets does not represent the real picture now," said an HMRC spokesperson. | |
| "In reality, answer rates on our phones are improving and wait times are falling." | "In reality, answer rates on our phones are improving and wait times are falling." |
| Lin Homer said new telephone systems had also been installed, which would help reduce waiting times. | |
| The Citizens Advice study looked at 34,000 tweets made between August 2014 and August 2015. | |