The December 2019 update from HMRC, delayed due to the Election purdah, is set out below.

“Agent Forum (December 2019) Update for VCG

Agent Forum (AF)

As at the end of December 2019 the Forum had over 610 (up 39) on November registered Agent subscribers, of 1229 users signed up to the old forum. The Agent Forum re-platforming has been live for three months now and even though registrations have not reached the levels of its predecessor, participation and issues traffic have increased. The new ‘Knowledge Base’ feature is also increasingly popular and carries announcements and real time taxes information and will support a Self-Assessment 2018/19 EoY filing programme. In conjunction with our Issues Overview Group (IOG) stakeholder colleagues, we have developed procedures to identify high priority widespread issues to be taken forward for resolution with our internal technical specialist and communications partners. This will be implemented on the Agent Forum going into 2020. We continue to both build our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) capability, recruiting from across HMRC to improve the quality and timeliness of issue resolution responses and focus on Agent Forum operations. Performance metrics carried forward from the previous platforms include over 162k views, 7200 posted messages on over 1480 current topics, all since July 2017; which are moderated daily with appropriate responses given, as determined by subject matter, related traffic generated, and referrals provided by line of business. In developing the new service, we will review what performance metrics are reported in future, as we better understand new functionality provided by the MS Dynamics platform.

The Digital Customer Support Services (DCSS) Agent Team is staffed by a Service Manager and 2.5 FTE Issues Resolution Managers (IRMs), who moderate and run the forum.”

END OF HMRC UPDATE