specialist team for tax credits renewal (merged)

misty28

Has anyones husband or other half had a letter too? just not sure why only to the women?

alison999

I think this is just another way of renewing.

If it was that important they'd send them special delivery otherwise there's no guarentee we'd get them

Its not like the renewal packs that you expect to get - we'd lnow to ring them if that didn't arrive

amani_2

I have received one of these letters today, addressed to me and my OH. date says date as post mark, my ref is my NI number not OH's, their ref is blank. their address Charles house, Preston. not signed just renewals adviser. number to call 0845 600 5265. I am in South Yorkshire.

Tam123

Hi I have just spoken to a very nice man on the number which was on my letter, he assured me that it was not fake and that if I still was not happy I could take the normal route via the Help Line to renew my claim. He said that they were just trying to speed up the procedure and that the different ref numbers were for different teams within the HMRC. He assured me that we were not under any kind of investigation and that if we were we would know about it!

jim2007

mon1o wrote: »

ok just spoke to a lovely man called russell at the tax credits office - he said because so many people call them and renew over the telephone they are trying to set up a specific renewals service. no one is under any kind of investigation its a pilot to see what sort of response this new 'team' will get so they can work out how to target the renewals in the future because its such a major task for them.

Hope that puts some minds at rest - it certainly does mine lol
Monica x

Thanks Monica, that is very reassuring. It seems there have been a lot of these letters sent out......yet another pilot scheme by the Government. Just to make sure they waste a bit more money. :T

twoheadedboy

These letters are genuine, the pilot is simply part of HMRC's attempts to reduce errors and overpayments caused during the renewal period and to ease the strain on the Tax Credit helpline during their peak period of the year.

The reason the letters have different telephone numbers and addresses are because this particular exercise is being carried out by various different Tax Credit processing offices (as opposed to the contact centres) so batches of the letters are allocated to different offices to spread the load.

Carter-Blood

I too have received a letter from this team which I find amazing considering I assist so many local people filing their tax returns and claims for Tax Credits, I aught to be the last person in need of specialist help.

I tried checking on these people and found their identity to be so sterile that it is impossible that they operated last year as claimed. The telephone number 0845 600 5044 also shows up on search as being associated with unsolicited calling.

Advising that we should ignore an alternative Official Governmental Letter is more than odd, it's scandalous, unless of course it is a fake designed to get us to give away our details so that they can then transfer the funds elsewhere.

I also advise you to look at the quality of the paper. It has to have been over ten years since any Governmental Department sent me paper that was so cheap.

twoheadedboy

Carter-Blood wrote: »

I too have received a letter from this team which I find amazing considering I assist so many local people filing their tax returns and claims for Tax Credits, I aught to be the last person in need of specialist help.

Hardly "amazing". The claimants selected to be part of this pilot are mainly (as far I am aware, although I might be wrong) selected based on the size of their current Tax Credit award and there will be thousands of people selected and receiving this letter. I'm afraid the Tax Credit system is not quite sophisticated enough to weed you out of selection based on the fact that you 'assist so many local people filing their tax returns and claims for Tax Credits'.

Carter-Blood wrote: »

I tried checking on these people and found their identity to be so sterile that it is impossible that they operated last year as claimed. The telephone number 0845 600 5044 also shows up on search as being associated with unsolicited calling.

This exercise did not operate last year, there was a similar outbound 'assisted renewal' pilot last year but this is a different exercise by a different team. Also, bear in mind this exercise has literally only just started so there will not be much info about on it. As for that number being associated with unsolicited calling, could you provide a link for that as google turns up nothing.

Carter-Blood wrote: »

Advising that we should ignore an alternative Official Governmental Letter is more than odd, it's scandalous, unless of course it is a fake designed to get us to give away our details so that they can then transfer the funds elsewhere.

Explanation is that, due to the way renewal packs are issued (all automatically templated), it's impossible to edit select packs to explain they've been selected for the pilot and give a different number that they need to call. So this letter had to be issued in advance to ask people to call the specialist teams once they'd received their pack. Not ideal but the only way round it.


I appreciate people can be a bit wary about these types of things and it probably doesn't help when the helpline gives out conflicting info (although this may be due to some people getting through to 'contingency' advisors, who while able to deal with renewal-related queries will not be as clued up as your average Tax Credit helpline advisor). But I can only reiterate that this is definitely a genuine letter regarding a genuine pilot exercise by Tax Credit Office.

sorryitsme

how do you know for sure?

twoheadedboy

I work for HMRC.