This briefing addresses the announcement today of around 1100 vacancies in HMRC in Enforcement and Compliance (E&C) work areas. These are available to members on both level transfer and promotion and members in HMRC will hopefully be pleased to see that most of them have only very minimal essential criteria. This is clearly very good news and is welcomed as part of the intention to re-invest in this area with a view to recovering an additional £7 billion in tax revenue.

The majority of the jobs are at O and HO and they are spread all over the UK in around 100 offices. Most of the jobs are in Local Compliance with some in Criminal Investigation and Specialist Investigation and a handful in RIS and DMB. We do subsequently expect some residual vacancies to be created in E&C but also other businesses where they have to backfill the jobs left by successful applicants in this exercise.

These vacancies follow a number of others that were released with restrictive essential criteria that excluded many members from applying. We remain concerned that there is still more demand for this from businesses than there needs to be but we have made strong representations on this aspect and are therefore pleased that HMRC have made efforts to increase the vacancies that don’t have these restrictions. Branch briefing BB/254/11 covered the issues in some detail.

Members may note that the bulk of jobs advertised with minimal essential criteria are not available to anyone who has no tax experience. We are pleased that this means that almost all the staff in Personal Tax, Business Tax and Enforcement & Compliance lines of business will be eligible. The major concern we have is that members in those lines of business in corporate roles with no tax background and members in other lines of business with no tax background will not meet even the minimal essential criteria and as such will not be eligible for these jobs.

Our concerns are compounded by the fact that a significant proportion of the staff in the redeployment pool and those under greatest threat from cuts in their businesses are from ‘corporate support service’ business areas. While not wanting to detract from the good news for many of the job opportunities we have stressed the need for HMRC to look at all options and do more to look for jobs for the vulnerable members in these work areas that will not be able to apply for the current opportunities.

Most recently we have had redeployments of staff including some from the redeployment pool and this was covered in BB/296/11. We can in future expect more redeployments as means to avoid redundancy. Our priority remains finding jobs for those in the redeployment pool and there is no dilution of effort or emphasis on this.

The promotion of 1000 AAs to AO caused some significant unhappiness among some AOs who were barred from applying for these jobs on a level move. Under normal circumstances we would of course oppose any barrier to level moves and refer branches to circular BB/089/11 from February this year that explained the Excom decision not put barriers in the way of such moves. The action taken though only applied to AA to AO promotions and was in line with paragraph 33 of the staffing agreement we reached with HMRC in 2008 after a ballot of members.

We do expect there to be significant opportunities for AOs not just for level transfers but also promotions to O grade in the next few years (as demonstrated by the current vacancy announcement). We have though been concerned about opportunities for AAs as jobs at this grade have diminished and the bulk promotion of many, while obviously welcomed by our lowest paid members, is also a deliberate effort that goes some way to avoiding future redundancies.

Members are reminded that nobody can be blocked by their business from applying for and taking up a job on promotion.

Of course where such vacancy filling exercises result in a number of applicants for each job then inevitably you end up with significant numbers of people who are unsuccessful some of whom may be disappointed. It has been so long since we last had opportunities on this scale that some of us may have forgotten this. More opportunities are though expected to arise including some residual vacancies created by the successful applicants.

Some members will look at which locations vacancies are being filled in and assume that if their office is not included then future closure is inevitable. We don’t think that such an assumption can be so easily drawn. We do though expect more announcements on future office closures around mid September and branches should already be campaigning locally to support their offices including engaging local politicians.

Our recent briefing BB/315/11 dealt with the constraints being placed on applying for vacancies in work time. This remains a matter of concern and disappointment.

Members should note that there is a minimum time in post of two years being applied to these jobs. It is important to remember that while this potentially stops you from a level transfer in that two year period it doesn’t stop you from apply for and, if successful, taking up a promotion.

Despite the undoubted good news these vacancies represent we must not lose sight of the fact that HMRC intends to cut staff numbers by 10,000 in the current spending review period and this follows 30,000 job cuts since HMRC was created in 2005. If we are to deliver in relation to public services, compliance and enforcement then we need more jobs in HMRC not less.

Please contact Lewis Bevan at lewis.j.bevan@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk

if you have any queries arising from today's announcement in HMRC