A staggering three-quarters of staff at HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) feel their working conditions have deteriorated in the past year – more than half, at 53%, believe it will be even worse in a year’s time.
Only a minority of HMRC staff, at 15%, said the integration of Revenue and customs had been good for customers, while 50% said it had been bad. This is in stark contrast to the attitude immediately after the merger, when 36% felt it was good for customers, against 18% who thought the opposite, the Financial Times reports.
The latest six-monthly staff survey, which was conducted in November when HMRC lost 25m child benefit records, revealed staff morale was lower than at any time since Revenue and Customs merged in April 2005 and just 17% of staff felt they could recommend the department as a good place to work – only half of those with the same view in May 2005.
HMRC said that, although it did not want to ‘shy away from the hard messages’ in the survey, it noted 48% of staff were ‘highly motivated’ to do their job well – a solid 10 percentage points up on the previous two years. In addition, more staff than in the past said they felt able to cope with the pace of change.
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