TheBriefing
SUSTAINABILITY
Mixed bag over ESG priorities
AAT members are split over whether they have seen a drift away from environmental and sustainability priorities in their organisations and job roles.
Readers were polled in the July/August issue of AT in the Responsible Business feature, ‘Does it have to be growth or sustainability?’ The piece examined whether the pursuit of galvanising the economy was coming at the expense of ESG goals.
Of the respondents, 45.7% had noticed a drift away from sustainability goals, while 51% said they had not.
EXPERTS’ VIEWS ON...
Tax policy and AI
“Without proper oversight, even the most promising technology can veer off-course, fast. It’s the difference between AI being a helpful assistant and it becoming your office’s most expensive fiction writer.”
Jon Bance, chief operating officer, Leading Resolutions
“A properly trained, AI-savvy workforce isn’t just good for business – it’s essential. The accounting field is advancing rapidly and our mission is to support people adopt and adapt to AI through practical, accessible programmes.”
Claire Bennison, executive director of customer, partnerships and innovation, AAT
“Ethical threats from AI are here, they are no longer theoretical. While AI is reshaping the way finance professionals work, it does not change the foundations of our profession.”
Helen Brand, chief executive, ACCA
Images: Getty/iStock
HMRC
HMRC to invest £500m in upgraded phone system
HMRC chief executive John-Paul Marks has confirmed that the tax authority is finalising plans to buy a brand new telephony system.
This ambitious plan will see 12 separate contracts for different aspects of the HMRC contact centre, phone system and customer engagement services merged into a single agreement with one supplier.
Modernising HMRC helplines is a priority as the current customer relationship management (CRM) system no longer meets modern expectations. The existing phone system has no queue management, which means anyone on hold for more than 50 minutes is simply cut off, while HMRC cannot put callers in a callback queue, which is standard practice outside the public sector.
For the last six years, the quality of HMRC helplines has been described as “unacceptable” by all the professional accountancy and tax bodies, as well as MPs on the Treasury and public accounts committees.
The plan was first announced in August last year. The £500m contract for a fully powered eCRM and contact centre as a service (CCaaS) telephony system will be awarded by April 2026 and will run for eight years initially. The expenditure will be allocated through to 2033 and will cost around £62m a year.
News in numbers
The number of UK taxpayers in the £100,000–£125,000 income bracket, up 12% on last year. People in this pay bracket see their personal allowance tapered away, leading to a 60% effective income tax rate.
Source: City AM
The proportion of of SMEs that did not borrow to invest in Q2.
Source: Barclays
The value of R&D tax relief claims, a 29% fall year-on-year amid an HMRC crackdown on fraud.
Source: Blick Rothenberg
The number of UK adults suffering from significant financial stress.
Source: LexisNexis Risk Solutions
The proportion of employees tracked online by managers.
Source: Chartered Management Institute
The increase in office service charges between 2023 and 2024.
Source: BDO
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI tool recovers £480m in fraud clampdown
A concerted campaign to recover millions of pounds in benefit and Covid-19 fraud clawed back £480m by making use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In a major crackdown, the government used AI-based data-matching technology and specialist investigators to target fraud by thousands of companies, particularly bounce-back loans and council tax fraud, as well as removing 2,600 people from social housing lists who were illegally subletting their discounted homes at taxpayers’ expense.
The AI system scans policies and procedures for weaknesses before they can be exploited by fraudsters, helping make them ‘fraud-proof’ when the documentation is being drafted.
Public sector pension fraud was rooted out after relatives continued to claim payments following the death of recipients. This recovered more than £68m, while nearly 40% of the fraud was related to Covid-19 schemes, totalling £186m.
The latest figures showed that £480m was recovered in the year to March 2025, up 29.7% from £370m in 2023/24.
Indices
UK GDP growth
In the three months to September 2025
UK unemployment
In the three months to September 2025
UK employment rate
Between May to July 2025
Consumer prices index
As of September 2025
House price index
Average price, as of September 2025
House prices index
Annual change, as of September 2025
