At over 70 pages the Report by the National Audit Office following its investigation into HMRC’s contact with Concentrix regarding its work on Personal Tax Credits makes depressing reading. Depressing if you were one of those vulnerable people who depend on their tax credits and were then refused them incorrectly. Also, of course, depressing for taxpayers everywhere because the same HMRC that foresaw incorrectly that this contract would result in major cost saving is seeing exactly the same with Making Tax Digital.
Some horrendous facts are detailed within this report and there are so many that I’m not going to list them all but here are some that how can I put it “caught my eye”:
Between November 2014 and September 2015 Concentrix failed to meet over HALF its performance targets
In July 2015 Concentrix answered 4.8% of calls YES 4.8% NOT 48% within 5 minutes against a target of wait for it 90%
In October 2015 Concentrix were awarded an increased commission of 11% compared to 3.9%
Concentrix terminated some 45,000 provisional awards which was way higher than the expected level of around 22,000 but the audit watchdog said these would have been lower had Concentrix processed more cases.
Over 30% of Concentrix decisions to amend or stop payments were OVERTURNED.
I could go on and on because there are lots more before you get to the bit where HMRC say they have learned their lesson and will not again outsource benefit decisions, which will be scant compensation to those who had to struggle to get to talk to someone and ended up having their benefits stopped for no good reason.
But what does this say about our HMRC? Did they put cost cutting at the forefront of their mind-set above service to the claimants? Did they pick the right company to provide the service? Did they monitor well enough the workings of the company? Did they react correctly to important data when received? Did they really increase the commission rate to this company? I ask these questions because this is the HMRC that is seeing £millions of savings for taxpayers via its digital agenda, this is the HMRC that is looking to commercial software to provide digital solutions and this is the HMRC that will be fining taxpayers who don’t get it right without fear of comeback.
This blog was written by Tony Margaritelli, Chairman of the ICPA. The ICPA is dedicated to supporting and promoting the needs of the general practitioner. You can find us at www.icpa.org.uk or email [email protected] or by phone on 0800-074-2896.
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