The HMRC website crash yesterday on the last day taxpayers were able to submit their tax returns, has raised concerns about the ability of public sector organisations to adequately cope with surges in demand on their sites.

Thousands of taxpayers were facing an automatic £100 fine plus interest on any tax due if they missed the original Thursday midnight deadline. However, HMRC has said that no one who files their return before midnight on Friday will be penalised.

“This is the latest in a string of high profile web crashes, and does nothing to help the reputation of the HMRC or government IT in general. It’s a shame that organisations build websites without the technology to cope with the massive demand they will court," said Rob Steggles, marketing director for managed hosting firm NTT Europe Online.

"Whether it is hardware or software failure or an overload of the bandwidth, the systems should be in place to balance the load, with overflow systems in place for business critical processes to ensure continuity.”

Bob Dowson, operational director of web monitoring firm Site Confidence advised firms to perform load testing to ensure their sites can cope with a high level of traffic.

“At the time of an important event, for example, online traffic can treble. Therefore companies need to monitor their site 24/7 to ensure their service can cope with online traffic at all times,” he added.