HMRC announces large scale local office closures

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have today announced they are too close 137 local tax offices which will be replaced with 13 regional centres. According to HMRC the closures will be complete by 2027, however current plans are to have the new centres opened within the next five years.

The new offices are to be held at various places across the UK:

– Newcastle
– Manchester and Liverpool
– Leeds
– Nottingham
– Birmingham
– Cardiff
– Belfast
– Glasgow
– Edinburgh
– Bristol
– Stratford
– Croydon

Four specialist offices will also operate at Telford, Worthing, Dover and at the Scottish Crime Campus in Gartcosh. A number of existing centres will remain open as transitional centres for up to 12 years.

HMRC faces heavy criticism of its call centres – only half of all calls received between April and June were answered successfully, however this has since improved.

Many staff fear job losses confirmed by HMRC, however they have stated that they hope redundancies would be minimised by their intended phased approach to the closures.

What is your opinion of HMRC? How do you think the centre closures will affect you or your business? Share your comments with us!