Tax offices to close across Wales with fears for jobs

All tax offices in Wales are to close with staff expected to transfer to new centres in Cardiff and Liverpool.

HM Revenue and Customs is shutting more than 100 offices to be replaced by 13 new regional bases, with up to 3,800 employed in Cardiff.

Offices in Wrexham, Swansea, Porthmadog and the present Cardiff office at Llanishen will close. An office in Merthyr is already due to shut in 2016.

The PCS union said the plans were "devastating" for HMRC and its staff.

HMRC Chief Executive Lin Homer said the organisation had "too many expensive, isolated and outdated offices".

"This makes it difficult for us to collaborate, modernise our ways of working, and make the changes we need to transform our service to customers and clamp down further on the minority who try to cheat the system."

HMRC said it currently had around 2,900 staff in Wales, including 350 in Wrexham, 300 in Swansea, and 20 in Porthmadog.

'Urgent'

It said staff will be given "a range of options and will have time to consider and discuss their future" with the organisation, but it stressed it expected to employ fewer people in total.

Staff from Wrexham would be expected to relocate across the border to Liverpool, while the BBC understands the Welsh-language services will be moved from Porthmadog to Cardiff.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "No one should be in any doubt that, if implemented, these proposals would be absolutely devastating for HMRC and the people who work there.

"Closing this many offices would pose a significant threat to the operation of HMRC, its service to the public and the working lives of staff.

"The need for parliamentary scrutiny of the plans is undeniable and urgent."

Labour's Shadow Welsh Secretary Nia Griffith said the plans would mean a "major loss of quality jobs in Swansea and Wrexham".

"For all the Tories' feigned interest in the North, the reality is that they are all too quick to slash jobs and centralise offices in Cardiff, with no regard for the impact on the local economy," she said.

HMRC's offices in Llanishen, Cardiff, are set to be replaced by a new regional centre

A Welsh government spokesman said the announcement was a "double whammy" after previous tax office closures including Carmarthen, Colwyn Bay and Pembroke Dock.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood told the Jason Mohammad programme on BBC Radio Wales she was "very concerned" about the tax office closures.

"The loss in jobs in places .... with population centres that are quite small relatively speaking, has a much bigger impact than it would in areas of a bigger size where it would still be a huge problem," she said.

Liberal Democrat economy spokeswoman Eluned Parrott called the news a "hammer blow" for many people in Wales.

"It's all very well for the Tory UK Government to claim everything is fine as a new site will open in Cardiff, but that will be no use to the people who work in the other sites across Wales."

However, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said Wales could gain jobs as a result of the new regional centre to open in Cardiff.

"HMRC will need to convince people that the reorganisation will be able to deliver a better service, but the changes could lead to more high-quality, skilled jobs in Wales," he said.