Nearly one in ten of HMRC’s most senior staff have stopped turning up on Fridays. Figures released to Guido’s FOI Unit show 9.1% of Grade 6 officials and 9.0% of Senior Civil Servants at the UK’s tax office were working compressed hours over a four-day week as of 31 July this year.
This perk has ballooned under Labour. In June 2024, 1,542 full-time staff were on a compressed four-day week. By July this year the figure was 2,267, a whopping rise of 47% in just two years. Grade 6 headcount on the arrangement jumped 64% and Grade 7 rose 55%. The Senior Civil Service figure rose by 37.5%…
The rise is almost entirely a management phenomenon because Assistant Officer and Administrative Assistant headcount on a four-day week has stayed the same at about 1%. The juniors man the farmyard on their own…
A Cabinet Office source told Guido: “It’s often the case that staff working on compressed hours do less work overall because of the way their weekday structure changes.” HMRC insists otherwise, claiming staff on the arrangement “receive no reduction in expected workload, performance standards or accountability”. It has no evidence for this though…
Asked for any internal review of the effect on productivity, output or service delivery, the department confirmed it “does not hold a central assessment, review or monitoring report”. HMRC also cannot say how many requests it turns down because there is no central record for applications…
The internal guidance states that staff should work 9 hours 15 minutes across four days instead of 7.4 hours across five days – arrangements can run for up to five years before re-application. Temporary versions can be waved through by a line manager with no formal HMRC involvement, and the policy openly concedes these may cover a period where “not all duties of your role are fulfilled”. Slacking off…
Bank holidays are handled informally with staff told their entitlement is not calculated automatically and they must “keep a manual record”. Compressed hours also stack on top of HMRC’s two days a week of home working, meaning a Grade 6 can be physically in the office two days a week. With a three-day weekend…
The wider policy document, which Guido has also seen, says HMRC “believe that flexible working can promote work-life balance and improve wellbeing and performance”. Taxpayers still waiting on post HMRC received in March 2025 may take a different view…
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”