HMRC to suspend net access in April

HMRC

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have announced controversial plans to suspend public access to their website during April, the end of the tax year.

Despite already coming under fire for their lacklustre customer service and badly-managed customer, HMRC now plan to close off access to their website, meaning that citizens will only be able to gain tax help through the maligned, and expensive, phone lines.

Mike Clasper, HMRC Chairman, previously spoke of the poor phone lines: “The area where we have our biggest challenge is that people want to contact us by telephone and I’m not happy with the service we are providing. It’s not acceptable.”

The shut-off will commence on April 2 and end on April 6 and HMRC insist that it is vital for the planned site renovation.

A spokesman for HMRC said: “The planned system downtime is part of our normal business operation and happens twice a year in April and October. It’s necessary to allow us to implement changes to our information technology (IT) systems in preparation for the new tax year. This particular one has been planned for the last nine months and whilst some IT services will be affected we have taken steps to minimise impacts where we can.”