NAO Report

NAO Report

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NAO Report re HMRC

"as the department has demonstrated to great effect in recent years, new improved
IT processes frequently add new layers of complexity rather than curing intractable problems. Digruntled and badly trained staff have proved that they are unlikely to overcome these obstacles to delivering better customer service".

Good grief! How damning can a report get? Who is in control of the finances of this monstrous uncontrollable entity, and in which particular decade will it be running to public expectations?

Clive Griffiths

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By clive griffiths
25th Jul 2008 14:02

Re-Structuring etc

I've always believed that there has been an obsession within various Government Departments for the need to tamper and change all the time. Senior staff regularly go "task and project seeking" all the time. This topic has been covered in some Sunday broadsheets over recent years.

That does not happen in privately owned entities because the cash is more "harnessed" to priority needs, rather than nice ideas. I can recall years back reading articles on Civil Service Departments, the inability to control, harness resources, security issues etc, years before the missing disks.

But the thing that is always going to be infuriating is the refusal to accept responsibility. Surely the public have rights to expect certain standards, indeed HMRC set those standards but they are rarely maintained, and nothing ever happens.

So the fact that a client of mine had five different tax inspectors take over his one formal enquiry case two years ago was not an issue to HMRC. It prolonged the clients anxiety for many many months, but nobody within HMRC saw fit to apologise to the TAXPAYER.

This is 2008, surely we are supposed to have learned most of the hard lessons by now. Then we get this damning report from the NAO! Things are (if anything) getting worse than before.

The public and all taxpayers deserve more quality service, not endless re-organisations everywhere. Are we going forwards or backwards?

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By User deleted
25th Jul 2008 13:07

Clive
Its OK. apparently the new management is going to sweep in and sort it all out!

Does make one wonder though. HMRC insists that it is accountable to lots of people, but practically that is totally meaningless. Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean.

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