Half of HMRC Whitehall staff working from home despite customer complaints

Half of HM Revenue and Customs staff in Whitehall are still working from home, despite complaints over customer service.

Only 53 per cent of civil servants working in HMRC’s headquarters were at their desks in an average week between January and March, a Telegraph analysis of official data shows.

At the start of this year, waiting times to speak to an HMRC adviser on the phone hit a record high of 25 minutes for those who got through.

Also in January, a damning report by the spending watchdog the National Audit Office found that the organisation had been getting its sums wrong on tax breaks.

In March, HMRC was forced to halt plans to push customers online by closing its phone lines for almost six months a year after Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, intervened.

Across the whole of the year from March 27 2023 to March 22 this year, just 48 per cent of civil servants working in HMRC’s headquarters at 100 Parliament Street were at their desks in an average week.

Attendance peaked at 62 per cent in the week beginning Dec 11. The only other week over the year in which attendance was at more than 60 per cent was that of Jan 15, while it plummeted to 34 per cent in the first week of this year.

Apart from the week of Christmas Day – in which five per cent of desks were occupied – the worst week for attendance was that of May 29 last year, with an average of 32 per cent of desks used by staff.

Although 100 Parliament Street is not used for handling customer calls, MPs raised concerns about the numbers working from home.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, said: “The lesson is obvious. HMRC is failing to deliver a service to the people, and they’re not going into work.

“They’re wasting taxpayers’ money because this is a Grade II star office space in London, which costs a significant amount of money. They should either be using 100 Parliament Street or they should move out.

“It is a breach of the seventh commandment – ‘thou shalt not steal’ – for if you don’t provide proper labour for your employer, you are in fact a thief.”

Figures showing the scale of working from home in Whitehall were not routinely published until 2022, when Sir Jacob launched a crackdown on home working during his time as the minister for government efficiency.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former Tory leader who also served as work and pensions secretary, accused HMRC of “deep incompetence” and “caring so little at times for the people they are meant to serve”.

He said: “It really is high time that the Civil Service, along with many other companies, now recognises the deep importance of working together from offices and redoubling their efforts to serve customers and taxpayers. This cannot be done if over half of your workforce do not work from the office.”

Greg Smith, the Conservative MP for Buckingham, said: “The working from home culture has to end. Productivity is simply lacking within too many government departments. People are not getting on with delivering for the British people.”

HMRC was the only Whitehall department in which below 50 per cent of desks were occupied on average in the past year.

The Foreign Office averaged 51 per cent and the Home Office 54 per cent, while the Ministry of Defence was the best performer, with an average of 80 per cent of staff at their desks.

New Whitehall guidance that says 60 per cent of staff are now expected to work in the office on any given day came into force on Tuesday.

HMRC sources said its flexible working offer was available to all staff, who are allowed to work from home two days a week as long as “operational requirements” are met.

Managers at the organisation recently produced a new report on office attendance, aimed at staff and managers, which HMRC said had led to an improvement. Three-quarters of its employees were already expected to work from the office three days a week prior to the introduction of the new rules.

John Glen, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, indicated at the end of last year that he did not feel the expectation of civil servants working in the office went far enough.

He said it was the “minimum” that mandarins should aim for and added: “If HSBC and Amazon have got people working three days a week, it’s perfectly realistic.”

An HMRC spokesman said: “We expect all office-based colleagues to now spend 60 per cent of their working time in the office. Hybrid working is part of our approach to being a modern and flexible employer, like many other organisations, and means that we can attract and retain the talent we need to deliver for our customers.

“Our colleagues are held to the same standards, whether they are working from an HMRC building or from home.”