Today HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is publishing the last in a series of decisions about its future office structure. These latest decisions affect HMRC staff in offices outside its urban centres in the east, north west, south west, Yorkshire and the Humber, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

HMRC’s regional review programme, which began in 2006, has been a massive and complex task. When HMRC was created in April 2005 from the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, it had 105,000 staff and two separate office networks with a total of 590 office buildings in well over 300 locations.

Throughout the review programme HMRC has consulted on its proposals with staff, trade unions and key external stakeholders including MPs to ensure that no relevant factors were overlooked during the decision-making process.

These have not been easy decisions. However, the overriding consideration has to be the Department’s need to address new and challenging customer demands by restructuring its business and estate in the most effective and efficient way possible.

Enquiry centre services, where customers can get face to face advice, will continue to be provided at or nearby their current locations.

HMRC plans to withdraw from locations between now and 2011-12 as circumstances allow and at a pace which enables it to maintain and improve customer services.

Details of the decisions, impact assessments and equality impact assessments will be published on the HMRC website today and MPs will receive email confirmation of decisions relevant to their constituencies along with copies of related assessments.