Eleven
June 20, 2013Bit of an interesting exchange here, between David Gauke and Shaun Woodward, the Labour MP for St Helens South.
He asks how many people will be made redundant if the St Helens enquiry centre closes, and how many people they served. Apparently there are five jobs at risk, but the numbers of visitors is the interesting bit:
Number
2008-09 15,900
2009-10 13,315
2010-11 17,070
2011-12 14,545
2012-13 13,296
So… five people answered between thirteen and seventeen thousand enquiries. Take the middle number, 14,545. Divide it by 5, and you get 2909. Divide that by the average number of working days in a year, 252, and you wind up with about 11.
Eleven people a day.
Sometimes you might deal with them in a minute – point them towards the phone. And sometimes you might be on sick leave, in a meeting, or training. Filling in your paperwork and doing your performance management review.
Eleven people a day.
Not exactly twiddling their thumbs, the HMRC staff, were they? So where are those taxpayers – sorry, customers – sorry, people – going to go to for help now?
tiintax 
In wordpress reader this looked like:
“He asks how many people will be made redundant if the St Helen’s enquiry centre closes, and how many people they served.
Eleven.”
That is a fantastic use of the “more” break, if that was what it was.I thought they served just 11 people. Had to click immediately…
Lol! And, ouch! And also, gotcha! (Entirely accidentally, sorry)