Four-day phone outage resulted in 99,000 lost calls

The closure of HMRC’s phonelines and online services was likely to have resulted in 99 000 missed calls according to Jim Harra.

The HMRC chief executive and first permanent secretary was responding to the House of Commons’ Treasury Committee which had requested details on the nature of the problem and the number of taxpayers affected. Mr Harra confirmed that taxpayers experienced problems between Thursday 1 and Monday 5 December.

The main customer-facing services affected were NCTS (used by traders when moving goods in and out of Great Britain under customs transit procedures) and PAYE online. But HMRC had to close its telephony helplines from 5pm on Thursday 1 December due to poor call quality and the inability of advisers to access relevant information or records on the department’s digital systems.

Mr Harra said HMRC would be ‘carrying out a review of lessons from this incident’.

Harriett...