Tag: PAC

Professional services specialists across Europe face a skills gap

Posted on April 26, 2022 by - News

Cloud software player Unit4 said that professional services specialists across Europe are experiencing lower growth due to a skills gap and dealing with legacy systems.

The Professional report services in Europe: a benchmark for 2022, commissioned by Unit4 and undertaken by PAC, examined a range of professional service markets, including those delivering IT support, and found optimism thanks to increased customer demand.

The report said that things could be even better if talent was easier to find and if dealing with legacy IT systems, often a consequence of consolidation, was not holding back more innovation.

That skills problem will only worsen, with the research revealing that 81 percent of professional services firms plan to increase their head counts to support growth.

HMRC customer service is “abysmal” says report

Posted on March 18, 2013 by - News

hmrchqHM Revenue and Customs needs to “sharpen up” its act when it comes to the way it handles calls, a parliament committee has said.

In its report, the Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) said the organisation’s treatment of call handling and responses to letters was “abysmal” and “disgraceful”.

It pointed out that in 2011-12, 20 million phone calls were not answered racking up a total of  £136 million wasted by callers who were waiting to speak to an adviser.

Against its target of responding to 80 percent of letters within 15 days, the department managed to reply to just 66 percent, PAC said, adding this was an “abysmal record.”

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said:  “HMRC’s ‘customers’ have no choice over whether or not they deal with the department. It is therefore disgraceful to subject them to unacceptable levels of service when they try to contact the department by phone or letter.”

However, she pointed out the organisation was aiming to change its attitude with officials “beginning to realise that “good customer service lies at the heart of any strategy.”

She added that it was also good news for those trying to phone the department as they would no longer be forced to use the more expensive 0845 numbers.

Other planned changes include the resolution of more queries first time and a call-back service where this is not possible.

Last week the department announced it would  cut a third of its customer-facing staff as well as closing all of its 281 enquiry centres in 2014. It said at the time, that instead of visiting these customers had to contact the phone line or go online to get their tax query answered.

Advisers may then decide that the issue should be discussed face-to-face at the caller’s home or elsewhere. The HMRC said that this could shave  £13 million a year off its bills.

However, PAC pointed out that the HMRC now faced more calls but had fewer staff.

It said that as a result of these changes the HMRC’s new target of answering 80 percent of calls within five minutes was “woefully inadequate and unambitious.”

Hodge said the department should instead set a more demanding target in the short term and a long-term target that is much closer to the industry standard of answering 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds.

“Just how the department is going to improve standards of customer service, given the prospect of its having fewer staff and receiving a higher volume of calls, is open to question. HMRC plans to cut the number of customer-facing staff by a third by 2015. At the same time, the stresses associated with introducing the Real Time Information System, Universal Credit and changes to child benefit are likely to drive up the number of phone calls to the department,” Hodge pointed out.

“Since our hearing it has also been announced that HMRC is to close all of its 281 enquiry centres which give face-to-face advice to customers. This will undoubtedly put even more pressure on phonelines.

HMRC spent approximately £900 million on customer service in 2011-12, around a quarter of its £3.7 billion total expenditure. It received 79 million phone calls and 25 million items of post in the year.

People contact HMRC because they want to get their tax right and HMRC is obliged to make sure they get a good service.

However, in recent years the standard of HMRC’s customer service has been described by PAC as “unacceptable.”

PAC calls back to work scheme “extremely poor”

Posted on February 22, 2013 by - News

Jobcentre-plus-The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has slated a hefty priced scheme aimed at helping the long-term unemployed get back into work.

The MPs have called the  Work Programme “extremely poor” after its research found that in the 14 months of the scheme being up and running only 3.6 percent of those involved moved off benefits into sustained employment.

PAC said that the performance was also “so poor” that it was “actually worse” than the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) own expectations of the number of people who would have found work if the Programme didn’t exist.

It also pointed out that the Programme was particularly failing young people and the hardest-to-help.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee of cross-party MPs, said: “It is shocking that of the 9,500 former incapacity benefit claimants referred to providers, only 20 people have been placed in a job that has lasted three months, while the poorest-performing provider did not manage to place a single person in the under-25 category into a job lasting six month.”

The programme was introduced in June 2011, at an estimated cost of between £3 billion and £5 billion over five years. However, PAC said that none of those contracted to help place workers had met their targets and their performance “varied widely”

It said that it was also concerned that some providers were focusing on people more likely to generate a fee, and sidelining jobless clients who required more time and investment.

“Given the poor performance across providers, there is a high risk that one or more will fail—either they will go out of business or the Department will cancel their contracts,” the report added.

This isn’t the only DWP scheme that has caused recent controversy. Back in January the department came under fire after French benefit assessment company Atos ordered 50,000 disabled Scots to go back to work.

The company was hired by the UK Government to help cut the welfare bill by assessing whether those on disability benefits were actually eligible for work.

Atos’s Work Capability Assessments aimed to do this by asking benefits claimants to complete a long questionnaire and attend an interview with an Atos employee.