Being Corporately Responsible

As a public sector body, many of our key functions carry with them strong Corporate Responsibility (CR) messages: the revenues we collect pay for schools, hospitals and other essential services; our protection of UK borders from drugs and prohibited goods benefits local communities; and our management of environmental taxes contributes to minimising climate change.

But it is the way in which we carry out these functions that provides the true test of how responsible we are. This is so important to us that we have included it in our statement of Purpose, Vision and Way. It is about how we are simplifying things to make it easier for taxpayers to deal with us; how we are going out into local communities to help our benefit and credit claimants receive their full entitlement; how we are helping local communities to reject those selling illicit goods; and how we are cutting back on the carbon emissions from our buildings and travel.

Behaving responsibly builds our reputation as an ethical organisation that can be trusted to deliver outstanding service. Implementing our strategy to transform the way we do things will make doing it the right way, the responsible way, second nature to us all.

Customers ethics and standards

We will only deliver the best services if we engage properly with our customers: consult them about what we do and the way we do it; listen to what they say; and act to improve things. That goes whether it is our big corporate customers or individual tax payers and claimants.

We have learned from experience that our relationship with customers must be founded on trust – trust that we will take care of the information customers give us, trust that we will deal fairly with everyone and trust that our customers are trying to do the right thing. We have reviewed, reinforced and published our values, commitments and standards to reflect these things.

Being part of the community

We work hard to be a good neighbour to the communities in which we operate and from which we recruit our workforce, making sure that our presence is a benefit and not a burden. We encourage our staff to play their full part in the life of the community.

We make strong links with the communities of our most vulnerable customers to give them support and information to access the services they need. This means getting out into the most deprived areas to talk to people and help them claim their entitlements.

Taking care of our staff

We must have skilled and capable people to deliver our services. So we invest in creating a workplace that people want to join and have jobs that they enjoy doing well, with a sense of well-being when at work.

To truly understand our customers, our workforce must be representative of the people we serve, so ours is an inclusive workplace where people from all backgrounds and cultures can feel at home and be successful.

Protecting our environment

Unsustainable development and rising carbon emissions will harm the economic and social wellbeing of the UK and the rest of the world. We help to control the UK’s carbon emissions through the efficient management of a range of environmental taxes. But we are also making our own contribution to reducing carbon emissions and protecting the environment. Through local small scale initiatives and targeted central investment we are changing the way we do things and the way we consume resources.

Testing ourselves and being open

The public, our customers and the government must be confident that we are acting responsibly and meeting our commitments. So, as well as publishing our results in numerous reports, we publicly test our performance against the best standards set by the public and private sectors. We are proud that we have achieved the highest standard in the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index and now stand alongside the top organisations for responsible business practice.

Lesley Strathie

Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary