HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) plays a highly responsible role in society. We are one of the largest central government departments, with offices across the UK and a presence at every major port and airport. Dealing with over 40 million customers, our activities range from collecting central government revenues to paying tax credits and protecting our borders from drugs and other prohibited goods. Key areas of the public sector rely on the revenues we collect to ensure that vital funds are available to run, for example, schools and hospitals.
We take our responsibilities seriously; striving to do the right thing for our customers, our people, our communities and for our environment. That means constantly asking ourselves, for instance, how easily people can understand our communications, how well we look after our staff, how we are impacting on our local communities and how we can do more to protect the environment.
Our efforts have been widely recognised. HMRC is the only Whitehall Department to appear in the Sunday Times Top 100 Corporate Responsibility Index. We were placed in the 'Gold' category for our work during 2006. We have also received gold status for the 11% of our staff who choose to donate to charitable causes through our payroll. In October 2006 over 100 business leaders from across the public, private and voluntary sectors supported our Responsible Business Summit, which set the scene for encouraging the three sectors to work together for the benefit of society. We have received 'Big Tick' awards for our work in local communities and we won two categories at the first Civil Service Diversity Awards in 2006.
The foundation of our corporate responsibility (CR) programme is set out in our Corporate Responsibility (CR) Strategic Framework (PDF 117K). This document outlines our ambition to: embed CR into all our business activities; develop a flagship programme as the focus of our community activity and tackle the environment through our Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP).
In collecting environmental taxes such as Climate Change Levy, Landfill Tax and Aggregates Tax, we are very aware of our environmental impact. HRH, The Prince of Wales told HMRC's CR Summit (PDF 491K) last year: "The sheer scale of the public sector's operations, for example in the consumption of energy, gives it enormous scope to make a real difference." We are not just focussing on our energy usage, we are positioning ourselves to meet challenging government targets across a range of environment issues, including recycling, waste, water, building and travel related CO2 emissions.
Please use the links from this page to find out more about our CR plans and policies.
