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Union condemns tax office closure announcement

13 January 2010

PCS Wales today issued a press release condemning the announcement by HM Revenue & Customs that will see ten Welsh tax offices close next year.

The Government department has confirmed that it is going ahead with plans to close 130 offices across the UK, including those in Welsh towns and cities like Aberystwyth, Brecon and Newport. Altogether, up to 1,700 staff are facing redundancy, with the majority of those still working in these offices to be declared surplus on Friday. Some 325 Welsh staff are at risk.

The Public & Commercial Service union (PCS), which represents staff working in the offices, slammed the decision to make such heavy cutbacks at a time of recession, pointing out that it would hit jobs, local services and advice to businesses and that Wales – which is more heavily dependent on public sector jobs than the UK as a whole – would be particularly badly affected. Surplus staff will have until 8th February to decide whether to accept voluntary redundancy on compulsory terms, or risk hanging on in the slim hope of redeployment, with the risk of being made compulsorily redundant in a few months’ time. As the government is currently seeking to cut redundancy terms for civil servants, this could result in them being significantly out-of-pocket. 

Marianne Owens, PCS HMRC Group Executive Committee member for Wales, commented: 

‘These office closures were first announced a couple of years ago, in the context of so-called ‘efficiency savings’ intended to deliver 25,000 job cuts in HMRC alone. Thousands of jobs have already been lost, undermining service levels and boosting tax evasion and avoidance. The office closure programme had stalled, however - having delivered no discernible savings - as the prospects of redeploying staff to alternative jobs within their own areas became increasingly remote, thanks to the recession. Now, HMRC has been given the go-ahead to pay off staff willing to take redundancy, in order to shut offices sooner rather than later, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer in excess of £100 million. Given the very limited opportunities for redployment for most of those affected, there is little real choice here: staff are being asked to jump before they are pushed. Instead of cutting yet more hard-working public servants and running down local services, we believe that the government should be standing by its pledge to tackle both unemployment and the tax gap, investing further staff and resources in HMRC, to help recoup the £130 billion tax revenue lost to evasion and avoidance every year.’


 

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