Border Force hit Brexit recruitment target – but only with agency staff
Officials accused of playing down impact of post-EU changes on goods heading to Northern Ireland
Border Force director general Paul Lincoln
22 Jan 2021
UK Border Force hit its recruitment target for extra staff to carry out customs-compliance work and and manage transit arrangements after the EU transition period – but needed agency staff to do it, MPs have been told.
Last November, the National Audit Office said Border Force was around 300 staff short of its recruitment target to hire 1,570 extra officials to cope with the new arrangements between the UK and the EU from January 1. The target was risk rated “amber-green”.
HMRC spent £53.2m maintaining creaky tech estate – report
Lindsay Clark Fri 22 Jan 2021 // 13:03 UTC Share
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An ageing IT estate is responsible for the bulk of the UK tax collector s costs in adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from Parliamentary spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee.
In a review of the tax authority s performance for 2019-2020, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found HMRC spent too much of its IT budget on patching up legacy systems rather than modernising them. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of an effective tax administration system. There is a strong case for investment in a modern IT system. Of the additional costs incurred by HMRC as a consequence of the pandemic, the largest element, as of 11 September 2020, was the cost of IT, the report said.
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