Communication and accessibility
Jump to
4.1. Since 2003 the Revenue has faced a vast volume of unanticipated work generated by computer difficulties, multiple processing errors, delays and disputed overpayments. It has struggled to deal with the resulting calls, letters, faxes and e-mails it has received from tax credit customers. In turn, the cases we have seen show that customers have been left desperate and frustrated by their experience in dealing with the Revenue about their tax credit awards, and their attempts to get matters resolved. Their inability to get hold of someone who can resolve their problem fuels more contact; the case ‘gets more legs’ as it turns into a complaint and possibly an appeal. More people get involved as the customer turns to advisers, MPs, and other outside agencies in an attempt to achieve a resolution.
4.2. The poor quality of communication and customer handling has undoubtedly increased the volume of calls, letters and other correspondence received by the Revenue. For a considerable number of the tax credits customers we have seen, it has also made the experience of dealing with the Revenue a very dismal one, as they struggle to get their cases properly investigated, explained and dealt with. Having telephoned, written, complained and appealed, they have often still failed to get any satisfactory response from the Revenue for several months.
Contact by telephone
4.3. The tax credits system has been designed around customer contact by telephone. Indeed, the telephone is cited by around 76% of customers as their most frequently used method of contact.[30] The Tax Credits Helpline is the ‘front desk’ in fielding customer calls about their awards and its operators are responsible for inputting revised information provided by customers onto the tax credits computer.
4.4. During the early months of tax credits, there were serious difficulties for many customers in getting through to the Tax Credits Helpline at all, due to the volume of calls (see Chapter 3.6). This problem was resolved by early Autumn 2003. Substantial extra resources have been put into the Helpline in the last 12 months, with two additional call centres opened and considerably more staff being taken on. There are currently around 2,500 staff operating the Helpline in six call centres, with a similar additional number of staff available at peak times.
4.5. Since then, the main complaint from the cases I have seen has been the inadequate response of Helpline operators when things have gone wrong. The stress of having to make repeated phone calls to the Helpline cannot be overestimated.
‘I have made umpteen telephone calls and each time I have to explain the situation. Every time I am told that they cannot help me further and that they merely log the call to the team who is dealing with my case. Many months later and still no solution in sight I wish to make a formal complaint about the length of time this is taking, the lack of communication between the various departments, the lack of correspondence to myself and the fact that this is causing me anxiety and stress.’
4.6. People who are desperate are resourceful in trying all avenues in an effort to reach someone in the Revenue who will take on their case and deal with it. From the customer’s perspective, the lack of response can make the organisation seem inaccessible and indifferent.
‘[In December 04] I telephoned the Tax Credits Helpline and advised them of the change in my circumstances… I was advised that I would receive early in the New Year a revised notification of my entitlements. By 13th January I had not received notification so I again telephoned the Helpline and was advised that somebody would phone me back… within five days. Payment of my partner’s Child Tax Credit had also stopped… By 26th January contact had still not been made…so I again contacted the Helpline and was again assured that contact would be made with me within two days. On the 8th February contact had still not been made with me so I again contacted the helpdesk, who advised me that a referral had been made to another department on the 26th January - who could not be contacted on the phone because ‘they would never get any work done if they spoke to clients on the phone.’… I have sent a number of e-mails to the Revenue online services helpdesk… which they have advised me they have forwarded to the Customer Relations Team at the TCO and still no contact has been made with me. I have also attempted to contact the Tax Credit Office in Preston [on the Customer Services telephone number]. This is either engaged or is not answered, this has happened on numerous occasions and is not an isolated incident. I have tried on different days at different times of day and night. We are currently living on my wife’s Sick Pay of £65 per week… What I am asking for is for contact to be made with me to advise what is going on…’
4.7. Currently extensive backlogs exist within the TCO in dealing with complaints, appeals and disputed overpayments. There is immense frustration among customers that there is no telephone access to, or communication from, the teams dealing with their case, to enable them to find out what is happening.
4.8. There are a number of reasons why the service given by Helpline operators has proved a frustrating experience for customers who have a problem with their claim.
- As the example in paragraph 3.13 demonstrates, Helpline operators dealing with customers and attempting to input changes into the system are not always immediately aware that technical problems are interfering with the claim.
- From the cases seen by the Ombudsman, there appears to be an inadequate history of contact on a customer’s account, in that it does not include the full details of what a customer has said in previous calls and the responses that they were given. This means that each time the customer telephones, a different operator - who may be in a different call centre - answers the call, and the customer has to repeat the background to their tax credit problem again. Increasingly, there is a long and complicated history behind the query - of calls made, what was said and what was promised - which has to be gone through each time. Not only is this frustrating for the caller, the lack of a full recorded history can mean it takes longer for an underlying error or issue to be identified. Each operator is looking at the case afresh.
Mrs N rang, and was told that there was still a problem with Mr N’s national insurance number. Mrs N wrote with the information. Shortly afterwards, the Revenue telephoned to say that they had cancelled the new award because Mr N’s national insurance number appeared incorrect. However, after some discussion, the officer said he had managed to resolve the matter.
Mrs N then received a letter saying she did not qualify for tax credits. Upon telephoning, she was told that her claim had still not been sorted out. She was advised to contact the National Insurance helpline. This she did. They referred her to the Department for Work and Pension). However, that Department said it could not help.
Eventually, in August, Mr N took time off work and visited his local Revenue office, where it was discovered that his national insurance number was different from the one on his form P60. By this point the local CAB had got involved. The Revenue advised the matter would be sorted by 22 August.
However, when Mrs N rang on that date, another adviser said her claim had not been sorted out. Eventually, four months later, and after further calls and letters, Mrs N was sent a giro cheque for nearly £2,000 arrears. It seems reasonable to conclude that, if Mr and Mrs N’s case had been consistently and actively managed in respect of the problem which arose regarding the national insurance number, the problem could have been dealt with far more quickly and expertly.
- Helpline operators working out of IRCCs (paragraph 2.18) are in many cases merely the ‘front desk’ for problems which are being dealt with by the TCO elsewhere. Yet they are the main - and in most cases the only - point of telephone contact for customers to deal with the Revenue about their case. The system is not designed to encourage Helpline staff to contact the TCO to try and resolve problems or get an update on the latest position whilst the customer is still on the telephone (presumably for the same reason that customers are not given direct telephone access (paragraph 4.7 above) namely so as to minimise disruption to the TCO’s handling of cases). As a result, there seems to be very little communication between the Helpline staff and the TCO, and customers are often left in the dark about what is happening, if anything, to sort out their claim. The problem has been particularly acute in cases where customers, living on reduced tax credits, are disputing that an overpayment should be recovered.
4.9. Since early 2005 the Revenue has developed a new call centre in Liverpool, which is intended to act as a backup for operators on the Helpline in dealing with more complex cases. Operators will be able to refer a case to the Liverpool office, with the caller being advised that they will be contacted within 36 hours. This is a welcome new development, which is designed to start a process by which cases can be resolved swiftly, without involving use of the complaints and appeals mechanisms. I will watch with interest to see how this model develops.
Writing to the Revenue about tax credit problems
4.10. Customers who have not been able to get a satisfactory response to their telephone calls have frequently tried to write to the Revenue. Written communication is an important method of contact for many customers, because it allows them to explain relevant facts and dates in more detail, to set out a chronology of their past dealings, and to martial their arguments.
4.11. In practice, this has not proved an effective method of making contact and getting matters dealt with promptly. Instead there have been long delays on the part of the Revenue in dealing with written correspondence.
4.12. In a surprisingly large number of cases I have seen, the Revenue has said it can find no record of customers’ letters or forms sent. This may reflect the fact that the tax credits system has been designed to function without paper records. There is thus no central repository for all the papers relating to a case, and letters will theoretically be directed to the relevant handling team (e.g. appeals) for action. It may also reflect the fact that a document which has been received has simply not yet been recorded onto the computer.
One customer who had been disputing the recovery of an overpayment wrote: ‘I have now filled in three recovery of overpayment [forms] and as at [date] they were still saying they had not received them. Some of the phone numbers they have sent don’t work. So you can only speak to the Helpdesk and all they can say is sorry. I have now managed to speak to [someone in the Disputed Overpayments Team] and she says she needs this recovery of overpayments form. What am I to do?’
Award notices
4.13. Many customers and their advisers have found the system-generated award notices, automatically issued whenever payments alter, inadequate in helping them to understand how their award has been determined. The problem has been exacerbated by people being sent multiple award notices, often in quick succession or even on the same day, where it is difficult to establish the sequence of what has changed and why.
4.14. Moreover, if a customer wishes to contact the Helpline to go through the forms with the operator, the system does not allow Helpline operators to call up on screen the award notices it has generated and sent to the customer. This makes communication difficult.
4.15. The award notice contains only limited information concerning the different elements of tax credits which make up a particular award, and the types of income taken into account. This can make it difficult, if not impossible, for a customer to identify that an award is wrong.
4.16. The lack of information and unintelligibility of the award notices sent to customers during the first two years of tax credits has undoubtedly contributed to the high number of overpayments that have occurred, simply because tax credits recipients found it difficult to comprehend the notices they were sent, or were not given sufficient information in the notice to spot that an error had occurred.
4.17. In my view, customers should be entitled to receive a comprehensible award notice, showing in a clear and accessible form how an award has been calculated, including the different elements of tax credit, the different types of income taken into account including individual social security benefits, and any additional tax credit payments being made.
4.18. Often the first communication customers will have from the Revenue, indicating that they have received excess tax credits earlier in the tax year and that recovery action has begun, will be a new award notice. The inadequacy of information to customers when they have received too much in tax credits is explored in more detail in Chapter 5.
4.19. After consultation with customer groups, the Revenue now plan to introduce a significant number of improvements to the award notice sent to customers towards the end of 2005-06, with some improvements being introduced in April 2005, to come on line in tandem with the appropriate IT software changes.[31] These planned improvements are very welcome. However, it will be nearly three years after the start of the new system before customers receive accessible and comprehensive award notices. It is unacceptable that in a brand new system the quality of computer-generated forms should be so poor. A truly customer-focused approach would have ensured that clear, accessible explanations of all aspects of a customer’s award were a fundamental starting point for designing the new system, not an afterthought.
Girocheques sent without explanation
4.20. Another example of a lack of a customer-focused approach concerns the practice of sending out girocheques to customers with a compliment slip but without an explanation. Tax credits payments sent out in this form are not recorded in the award notices customers receive (which only cover payments made via the tax credits computer). Therefore it is very important that customers receive - alongside the girocheque - a full written explanation as to why it has been sent.
4.21. We have seen a number of cases where customers have been deterred from cashing cheques they have received (representing remitted overpayments, compensation awards, or even interim payments on hardship grounds) because they are afraid that the money may have been sent in error. It has been left to the Ombudsman’s staff to explain the reason for the payment. Indeed, there have even been cases where customers have returned girocheques to which they were entitled, because they did not trust that the payments were correct. At a meeting between staff from the Ombudsman’s office and Revenue staff, it was explained that, for internal security reasons, the process of issuing girocheques is completely separate from other dealings with customers. Whilst we fully appreciate the need to take appropriate steps to avoid internal fraud, the Revenue needs to take equally seriously its obligation to its customers to provide clear and coherent explanations of the money it sends to them. Ideally, an explanatory letter could be sent with a tear-off girocheque at the bottom. At the very least, better co-ordination is needed to ensure that customers receive an explanation for the payment at the same time as, or just before, a girocheque is received.
Footnotes
30 Inland Revenue and HMCE Customer Service Performance Indicator Survey 2004
31 See Revenue letter to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, 21/4/05, Appendix C
