HMRC is the only government department to appear in this year's Business in the Community (BITC) Index of the top 100 corporately responsible businesses. Our eighty-seventh place in the Index is an improvement of ten places on the benchmark set by the Inland Revenue last year.
The Corporate Responsibility Index is a voluntary, business-led standard of responsible business practice. It enables companies and organisations to assess the extent to which their corporate behaviour is translated into responsible practice throughout the organisation, with customers and stakeholders and in the community.
For HMRC corporate responsibility has been a vital component of our first successful year. It has been demonstrated through the commitment shown across the organisation to maximising the positive impact we have on our stakeholders (including our customers and suppliers), our staff, the community and the environment.
This is great achievement for HMRC. We plan to build upon this success by embedding corporate responsibility into our business activities and improving our position in next year's list.
In 2004 the Inland Revenue achieved the 'Big Tick' standard for each of their 4 entries into Business in the Community's 2004 Awards for Excellence. The entries covered work that ranged from environmental to community activity. The Diversity in the Workplace entry achieved a runner up place in the national finals. Another of the entries, submitted in partnership with local businesses in Preston, also won the prestigious top place as BitC's National Example of Excellence for Collaborative Action.
The Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise submitted 8 entries between them for Business in the Community's 2005 Awards for Excellence. 5 of those entries achieved the 'Big Tick' standard and one of the entries, Bristol Action on Homelessness, achieved a runner up place in the national finals.
In partnership with HM Treasury we have improved our Red Box service to take account of the feedback from users. Red Box is a free interactive resource for schools to teach pupils about tax and public spending. It fits with the citizenship element of the National Curriculum. See at Red Box for more information.
We have developed an electronic brochure for students giving information about tax related issues, whether you have a loan to repay or are a working student or a student parent. See The student online brochure Tax+U (PDF 59K) for more information.
We continue to support the work of the Prince's Trust as it offers good quality, value for money training and development opportunities for our staff. Excellent benefits are obtained from the community based projects, for both the communities and HMRC's business aims. We have continued to offer our support to all new businesses sponsored by the Trust's Business Programme so they can receive access to information and education on a range of tax related issues at an early stage to help them attain and retain economic independence through their new businesses.
Key achievements in 2004-05 include:
We are writing a new Sustainable Development Policy for HMRC. Meanwhile our achievements are a direct result of the two former departments' Sustainable Development Policies. More information can be found at:
With the largest petrol-electric hybrid fleet in the UK (180 vehicles) former HM Customs and Excise's National Fleet Management has massively reduced CO2 emissions arising from frontline operations. In addition to winning the fleet industry's top award Fleet News' UK fleet of the Year in March 2005 for the second successive year, they also won two of the country's most prestigious national environmental transport awards:
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been actively involved in international activities and global development for many years and has built a worldwide reputation for targeted delivery, quality, professionalism and integrity.
International Capacity Building's strategic objective is to:
"Promote, manage and coordinate global revenue and customs development
activities and strategies which contribute towards Public Service Agreement
(PSA) targets and business objectives of HM Revenue & Customs and other
UK Government Departments."
In line with the Departments' strategic objective on 'Corporate Social Responsibility', ICB works in partnership across Whitehall and with other development agencies to try and ensure that international activities embrace corporate social responsibility. We do this in a number of ways but in particular by:
HMRC believes strongly in corporate social responsibility and understands that it embraces a wide range of issues. Corporate social responsibility provides great potential to help us all achieve international goals for sustainable economic, social and environmental development.
