Walkout won't hurt our website, say HMRC

HMRC’s web offering will not be unduly affected by planned industrial action by members of staff on Budget day, the department has said.

Up to 52,000 Revenue employees are expected stay at home on Wednesday (24 March) as part of a larger Civil Service campaign organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). Members are protesting against changes to a compensation scheme that covers public sector workers in the event of redundancy. A two-day strike earlier this month involved around 200,000 PCS subscribers.

The date of the action has been chosen by the union purely as a symbolic gesture, and the organisation does not expect HMRC’s services to be any more affected than during the previous walkout.

The department has committed to ‘doing everything it can to maintain services to the public’, and contingency measures have been put in place to ensure that new web pages, including those covering the Budget, are loaded efficiently. 

‘We do not expect there to be any degradation of the service this time around. It might take us a few minutes more, and there will be a prioritisation process for all publications on the day, but hopefully it will appear seamless to the customer,’ said Brian Redford of the taxman’s Business Customer Unit. ‘HMRC will plan to offer the same level of service as normal.’

Categories: News , Budget 2010 , PCS , Admin