Cracking the Whip

Today

In a recent letter my sister was commenting that her place of work scans and shreds every document so that there's hardly a scrap of paper in the place. A far cry from the Inland Revenue (HMRC) with its rooms full of files, she said.

In My Day

When I worked in the Inland Revenue the system was that a file was created for every taxpayer. In the PAYE section there was also a card on which the basic tax code and annual P60 details were entered. The cards sat in "hods" which lived in the desk drawers of the officer dealing with the relevant cases. The files were placed in huge shelves. When I worked at Eastbourne these shelves were all down the centre of the main office.

Now, for the vast majority of PAYE taxpayers, the files were never looked at again. The tax was collected by the employers and the P60 details were entered annually on the cards. A quick check was made that the amount collected was correct within a given tolerance and that was that. Very efficient, PAYE is.

In 1984 the powers that be woke up to the fact that across the country enormous amounts of valuable office space was devoted to these useless files. This was before scanning so Head Office was reluctant just to chuck everything out. However, they did have access to central space at their sorting office in Kew. So it was decided that a rolling programme of file clearance was to take place. Guidelines as to what was to stay and what was to be sent to Kew were issued, together with the time slot in which the job was to be completed.

At Eastbourne our slot was about ten days before Christmas. The job was given to the clerical staff on PAYE and was simply piled on top of their everyday work with no provision for overtime or extra staff. I was the manager in charge of the PAYE administration group. I looked thoughtfully at my grumpy team. Clearly they were going to drag their heels over this one and I would have to become some kind of mule-driver wielding a whip, not a prospect I relished.

I marched into the inspector's office. "Permission to consume alcohol in the office" I requested. He was a mild man so he merely blinked and said OK. I went back to my team. "Right!" I said "This is what we're going to do"

I went out to buy wine and mince pies. Then I rolled up my sleeves and got cracking alongside the clerical assistants with the sorting and movement of the files into great crates. At coffee and tea breaks we had wine and mince pies. The job went with a swing, was done in half the time and I never once had to get out my whip.

Within two years the computerisation of PAYE had been completed so the files and cards became redundant anyway. And hardly anybody works in local offices any more.

I guess that is more efficient than the days when on officer could easily have six hundred pieces of unanswered post sitting on their desk, but I personally still feel hesitation about throwing out paper documents and devote quite a bit of my space at home to storing them.