Revenue and Customs: Staff
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) total number of full-time equivalent customer service staff employed by HM Revenue and Customs was in each of the last ten financial years and (b) number of these positions that were based in (i) call centres, (ii) face-to-face service locations and (iii) digital support teams.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson
HMRC operates a flexible resourcing model, meaning staff are deployed across different types of customer service work throughout the year. This approach allows the department to direct people to the areas of highest demand, whether that is helplines, post correspondence, webchat, or other customer contact channels. Because staff move between these activities as demand changes, HMRC does not separate out staffing into specific categories.
However, HMRC can provide overall full‑time equivalent figures for Customer Services from 2019-20 to 2024-25, noting that these staff may work across several frontline customer service functions depending on business need.
HMRC is unable to provide figures prior to 2019-20 because doing so would exceed the cost threshold for answering written parliamentary questions. This is due to the information, where it is available, being held across multiple systems that do not align with current reporting definitions, and producing the data would require significant separate interrogation and analysis.
Average number of frontline customer service staff (000):
- 2019-20: 20.0
- 2020-21: 19.6
- 2021-22: 19.2
- 2022-23: 19.4
- 2023-24: 18.2
- 2024-25: 17.4
Most customers are satisfied with the service they are receiving from HMRC. Satisfaction with phone, webchat and digital services was 80.0% to the end of November 2025-26, meeting their 80% customer satisfaction target. Customer satisfaction with digital services is consistently above 80% (82.9% up to the end of November 2025-26).
Notes:
- Staff numbers represent averages of monthly data.
- Numbers include permanent and temporary staff for HMRC Customer Services Group. Numbers are for full-time equivalents.
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