Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what targets he has set for improving the proportion of written correspondence sent to HM Revenue and Customs which is answered within (a) 15 days and (b) one calendar month.

Due to the impact of COVID-19, HMRC’s role responding to COVID-19, and the wider economic uncertainty, HMRC agreed with Ministers that it would set rolling quarterly performance expectations rather than full year external targets for the year 2021-22. HMRC is publishing these expectations from the Quarter 2 expectation onwards within its quarterly performance publications: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-quarterly-performance-updates

HMRC’s Quarter 3 expectation, October – December 2021, for the percentage of correspondence cleared in 15 days is 55 per cent. This includes both post and online forms. There is no calendar month expectation.