Temporary Housing Officer - Housing Benefits and Planning

Reference no: Southwark 5223330

Pay rate: £15.75 per hour PAYE

The Housing Officer will be responsible for comprehensive resident led housing functions, maintaining a high quality physical environment and a resident focussed customer friendly service.

Key responsibilities:

• Provide a visible and approachable presence on housing estates through regular inspections and patrolling.
• Be the first point of contact for any housing related issues raised by residents of the Council’s estates both tenant and leaseholder. Ensure that issues raised are comprehensively case managed and other services are proactively engaged so issues are resolved.
• Provide a comprehensive tenancy and leasehold management and enforcement service, driving and managing the consistent and forceful application of the Council’s policies and procedures.
• Enforcement against unauthorised occupants and proactively tackling cases of housing fraud. Working with colleagues to support households to move to accommodation suitable to the size of their family and ensure properties are let quickly with a culture of payment (rent/ charges) instilled with all new residents.
• Assist in action plans for neighbourhoods to ensure they are clean, safe and well maintained to residents satisfaction.
• Conduct Fire Risk Assessments for low rise blocks, including the recording, management and monitoring of all actions identified in the assessment.
• Manage all cases in the areas of nuisance, ASB and vulnerability, and working closely with relevant agencies and departments to find sustainable solutions in individual issues and to bring about satisfactory resolutions.
• Work with vulnerable residents to ensure their needs are met through the housing service and to provide a signposting service for residents with additional support needs to partner departments within the council and agencies outside of the council.
• As required, participate in income collection functions, resident involvement activities, monitoring contract compliance of those undertaking services to estates and preparing technical specifications for planned maintenance programme.
• Maintain housing related databases and produce reports and statistics related to the functions allocated.

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

Experience:

• Experience of tenancy management and leasehold management.
• Experience in a customer facing role, ideally in a social housing field.
• Experience of income/debt collection policies and procedures.
• Experience of dealing with conflict.
• Experience of organising and prioritising a workload, managing conflicting demands and undertaking a variety of administrative and financial tasks in a structured environment to support the delivery of services.

Knowledge:

• Understand current issues affecting local authority and social housing.
• Working knowledge of housing and leasehold management law and practise.
• Knowledge of legal processes on tenancy management, including preparing and presenting cases for case conferences and court action.
• Knowledge of ways of tackling racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

Skills:

• Ability to work remotely without direct day to day management and supervision.
• Able to build effective working relationships with staff, peers and members.
• Able to work as a part of a team contributing positively to collective goals.
• Ability to draft correspondence, information and reports to a high standard using appropriate technology.
• Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role, or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
• Strong IT skills using Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).

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.