Guernsey revenue service 'difficult place to work'

Boley Smillie said tackling revenue service backlog was his priority in his new role

The current revenue service is "a difficult place for people to work", Guernsey's new chief executive of the States has said.

Boley Smillie said the service in charge of personal income tax was "clearly not performing well" or where the states would "like it to be at the moment".

The department has been criticised for its lack of public trust and IT issues causing delayed tax returns being processed.

Smillie said the staff, which were "on the frontline", worked hard "in the circumstances that they find themselves in".

He said: "We need to equip those people to make sure they've got the right tools to do the job and they will do a cracking job.

"They've got some great ideas, some brilliant initiatives and I'm absolutely sure if we empower them and give them the opportunity to change things and help themselves we'll see a dramatic improvement."

Mr Smillie said although morale was "low", staff members were "optimistic" with the plans going into the future.

He said: "They really care about the service they provide, there's absolute acknowledgement it's not where it needs to be and they have lots of ideas.

"In terms of the systems that we have, the technology that we've deployed, it's just not working in a way that they need in order to provide a good service."

The chief executive said change would take time and that it had to happen "from the bottom, up".

He said: "The thing I'm really pleased about is we've got a group of people that are kind of really, really up for that and that's the kind of case study I'd like to create within the public services.

"We've got a very good, difficult situation that we wouldn't necessarily want to be in but the advantage we've got to take from that is when we start to demonstrate change, it will be an example we continue to use to others."