Interim Housing Solutions Officer x2 - Housing Services

Reference no: Southwark 5224251

Pay rate: £24.24 per hour PAYE 

Role length:  This opening assignment is for 3 months

An experienced Housing Solutions Officer is required, trained in Part 7 Housing Act 1996 and HRA, to assist with a backlog of S184 decisions.

To provide a full range of advice on housing options including, but not limited to the private and public sector and ensure comprehensive homelessness prevention service. To provide an effective, professional homelessness service on behalf of the Council including assessment and investigation of homeless approaches and applications in line with the Councils’ statutory duties under Housing Act 1996 Part 7 as amended by Homelessness Reduction Act, Statutory guidance and relevant case law.

Key responsibilities:

• Assist with a backlog of S184 decisions.
• Provide an effective, customer-friendly and efficient service to clients presenting with housing problems; to support them in keeping their current home or in accessing a new home in the public or private housing sector.
• Advise clients on full range of options available to support them to resolve their housing problem, including, but not limited to intervention if threatened with homelessness or homelessness, registering on council housing list, initiatives for council tenants, private renting, mortgage advice, moving out of London and shared ownership.
• Promote the use of the private rented sector as a viable alternative to social rented housing, in order to encourage independence, prevent homelessness, provide settled housing solutions and reduce the Council’s use of temporary accommodation.
• Provide excellent tenancy sustainment support ensuring tenancies in the private rented sector are sustainable.
• Provide advice on all processes leading to acquiring a private rented sector tenancy and tenancy sustainment service for all households approaching Housing Solutions Service.
• Identify the welfare and support needs of homeless people who require private rented accommodation through visits and other contacts, reports from internal officers and liaison with other agencies.
• Visit applicants who are potentially homeless and their excluders to assess their current circumstances.
• Provide advice on the full range of housing options available to customers and their family. To prevent homelessness where appropriate and to use judgement to make timely relevant interventions.
• In accordance with the HRA, provide a professional and effective housing options and homelessness investigation service including, but not limited to, taking a full application from the service user and issuing personalised housing plans in preventing or relieving homelessness irrespective of the customer’s priority need or intentionality status.

“Role Requirements” – to give yourself the maximum chance of success please try and ensure your CV addresses the following essential criteria:

Experience:

• Experience of S184 decisions and Homeless assessments.
• Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role, or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
• Experience of providing an effective advice service to members of the public.
• Experience of implementing an equality and diversity approach to service delivery.
• Experience of working in a team.
• Experience of working with homeless clients desirable.
• Experience of carrying out interviews, investigations and negotiations desirable.
• Experience of effective record keeping including electronically.
• Experience of successfully working to performance targets and deadlines.

Knowledge:

• Thorough understanding of inner city housing issues.
• Understanding of access to social housing locally.
• Awareness of issues and initiatives facing local authority housing.
• Knowledge of relevant Lettings, Homelessness and Housing Act legislation including security of tenure and private tenants’ rights.
• Knowledge of relevant case laws and Codes of Guidance desirable.
• A good knowledge of services, benefits and support available to applicants experiencing housing problems.

Skills:

• A good communicator and able to write homelessness decision letters.
• Able to work with little supervision.
• Excellent interpersonal skills including active listening and advocacy skills.
• Ability to gain, and retain, the confidence and respect of staff, service users and other contacts.
• Ability to work unsupervised, prioritise workloads and achieve targets and deadlines.
• Ability to gather information and interpret complex issues e.g. legislation and Case Law quickly, to think creatively about problems and identify solutions.
• Ability to work effectively and even-handedly with people from diverse backgrounds and circumstances.
• Strong IT skills using Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).
• Able to work outside normal working hours to respond to emergencies or attend meetings.

NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via [email protected] by quoting the job reference and job title exactly. SEE DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS AD.

If you have previously applied to one of our vacancies and have already sent the required supporting documentation to us, please make this clear when you re-apply as this will help speed up your application.

To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would suggest that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, rather than as a PDF.

If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than entertaining umbrella pay terms, we do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity.