Corporate Responsibility Plans for 2005-06

In 2005-06 our corporate responsibility strategy will build upon the work of the former Inland Revenue and former HM Customs and Excise. HMRC’s CR Steering Group will provide high level leadership chaired at Board level, for details see Corporate Responsibility Leadership.

We will continue the relationships that both departments have developed over several years with Business in the Community and the Prince’s Trust. We are particularly delighted that Business in the Community and the Prince’s Trust agreed to become our key CR partners and have taken seats on our new CR Steering Group. Their experience and guidance will be invaluable to our CR progress.

With the help of our key CR partners, the development of measurable targets and clear accountability at senior level, we will ensure that our CR activities are clearly focused on supporting the new department's business objectives. For example, our community activities will include:

• working with schools and homelessness agencies to help people become employable and employed, through mentoring, interview coaching and CV assistance;
• working with drug rehabilitation organisations to help educate against drug use, to protect future vulnerable members of society and contribute to the improvement of frontiers work
• enabling HMRC staff to undertake volunteering or personal development community activities amongst socially excluded community groups so staff better understand our customers’ needs.

We will be taking part in various CR benchmarking opportunities such as Business in the Community’s Corporate Responsibility Index, Race for Opportunity and Opportunity Now benchmarking and the BitC Awards for Excellence.