MSE News: Tax-Free Childcare website hit by 'intermittent' technical issues

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A new website set up to allow parents to apply for two Government schemes to help with childcare costs has been hit by technical problems this week, MoneySavingExpert.com can reveal...

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'Tax-Free Childcare website hit by 'intermittent' technical issues'

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fru-girl

The website is down since Friday. At the moment I'm able to sign in but once in, it's very slow and freezes. I called them on Friday and they've said "they are aware of the issues and they don't have any estimate on when it will be fixed". Absolutely ridiculous, my childminder has been waiting for me because she's just nice, but at this point I feel like just paying her out of the pocket, and not getting the TFC benefit this month. Worth £80...

Shame on the govt for not fixing the issue. Wondering where I can report them... my money is blocked in their system at the moment!!

fru-girl

this is the message that gets displayed over and over again:

We're experiencing technical difficulties

We don't know when the service will be available again.

Please try again later.

fru-girl

and btw this is the direct log in page (it can be used only after setting up the account for the first time).

https://childcare-support.tax.service.gov.uk/par/app/trialmessage

nickcott

This is unreal. I'm having the same issues. Get to page that sends me an access code to my mobile phone. Plug in the code and then it crashes with the standard "technical issues" message. Been the same issue for over a week - at different times of day. Why is this not getting greater coverage in the press? ...and why are HMRC not keeping users informed of status? To say they're not sure when the service will return is not good enough.

sfmorris

These issues are anything but intermittent. Why send emails saying the service is ready to use when it clearly isn't?

fru-girl

The system seems up at the moment but it's been up and down all week. It finally made the payment to my childminder, 1 week delay. The other thing that's very frustrating is that you cannot see - in the statement section - who you made the payment to, after it's made. We use an afterschool club as well as a childminder and I cannot distinguish between the two, on the "view transactions" tab, it only says "BACS Payment to CCP" for all transactions.

HMRC had a lot of time to prepare for this launch (the launch was delayed by more than 1 year due to Edenred suing the government). I cannot believe how bad the payments system is... I know it's in "alpha" state but still...

fru-girl

Btw, this is how the landing page looks like, for anyone who's curious:

fru-girl

And again... "intermittent issues" means daily, really.

[Deleted User]

I blame the Chinese...

tastyfish

It's now August and the site is still experiencing issues. Yesterday it was unavailable. This evening, it stopped halfway through an application. With a message saying it's closed until '4th July'. Seems this government is completely incompetent with absolutely everything it touches.

The feedback form page also crashed after submitting it.

As did the childcare calculator.

I was also given an option to apply for 30 hours AND tax-free or stay with childcare vouchers. It didn't say if this was set in stone or if I could apply for tax-free childcare later. I was hoping the calculator would help but it was less helpful than getting all my info into a spreadsheet. In other words, completely useless.

My suggestion to the government would be to completely fire the entire project team responsible for this farce: project managers, business analysts, developers, testers, the whole bl00dy incompetent lot.

Totally, totally, useless.