PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Revenue and Customs: Telephone Services (1 November 2016)

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) average waiting time was for a call to be answered, (b) average length of each answered call and (c) longest waiting time was to the HM Revenue and Customs' publicised helplines in each of the last 12 months for which figures are available.

Asked by:
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party)

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) publishes regular performance reports, which are published on GOV.UK at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/business-plan-indicators .

Improvements to services have been made and HMRC are now consistently answering 90% of calls first time, with an average speed of answer of under five minutes over the past six months

The average length of each answered call for each month for the past available 12 months is as follows:

Month	Minutes: seconds
Oct-15	09:13
Nov-15	09:03
Dec-15	08:37
Jan-16	08:20
Feb-16	08:32
Mar-16	08:37
Apr-16	08:28
May-16	08:34
Jun-16	08:45
Jul-16	08:27
Aug-16	08:06
Sep-16	07:58

Answered by:
Jane Ellison (Conservative)
4 November 2016