In Parliament

Revenue call centres

The targets for Revenue 'contact centres' are that no more than five per cent of attempted calls should reach an engaged tone and that no more than five per cent of attempted calls should be abandoned. Dawn Primarolo continued that of the calls not engaged or abandoned 90 per cent should be answered within 20 seconds. She said that ten million pay-as-you-earn taxpayers have new Revenue contact centres as their first point of contact and that by July 2002 this number will be 15 million or 50 per cent of all pay-as-you-earn taxpayers. Where an enquiry cannot be dealt with by the contact centre it is passed to an officer in the service office. If further research is still required the target is to return to the taxpayer within one working day unless this is inconvenient to...