- Pay Rate:
£20.35 per hour PAYE
- Hours per Week:
22.2 Monday – Friday, 3 days, normal working hours
This opening assignment is for 2-3 months
- OXFORD, Oxfordshire,
OX1 1BX
Interim PT Accommodation Placement & Property Officer
Reference no: OCC 0007 D5A2 / 1
Pay rate: £20.35 per hour PAYE
Hours per week: 22.2 Monday – Friday, 3 days, normal working hours
This opening assignment is for 2-3 months
City: OXFORD, Oxfordshire
Hybrid role
Enhanced DBS required for this role
Full UK driving licence
A PT Accommodation Placement & Property Officer is required to be an effective member of the Placement and Procurement team, responsible for effective placements and management of the Council’s Temporary Accommodation as well as working collaboratively with colleagues across the department to support the objectives of the Housing Needs team; homelessness prevention, rapid re-housing and excellent customer outcomes.
To be responsible for the effective management of temporary accommodation, including responsibility for property management and maintenance, reporting any property condition or health and safety concerns, managing breaches of licence (including rent arrears), void turn around and prompt and efficient placement. Working with vulnerable residents some of whom may be risk to themselves and others.
Key responsibilities:
- Work with colleagues to respond to requests for emergency and planned placements, signing up new clients, recognising shifting priorities, all within a fast paced customer focused environment.
- Ensure that clients first contacts with the Temporary Accommodation service at sign up are positive, sensitive to the clients’ needs and ensure that every tenant in accommodation is given the right information and support to make a great start to their placement.
- Complete housing benefit claims, Direct Debit forms and to assist in other claims for welfare benefits. Assisting clients move in, and ensuring they are familiar with the accommodation (including fire escapes and fire safety equipment) and have access to all the information that they need about their accommodation and the surrounding area.
- Ensure that all licensees are fully aware of their contractual terms, rights and obligations relating to the Licence Agreement.
- Undertake regular property inspections and occupancy checks (including monitoring and maintaining the controlled entry door system (SALTO) in accordance with Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) as per an agreed work plan, or when requested and to keep all records accurate and up to date as necessary.
- Work with colleagues to ensure that accommodation is of a consistently high standard when households move in and that good standards of health and safety and security are maintained both within properties and communal areas.
- Manage all void temporary accommodation to ensure it’s ready to let within a designated time frame and in an efficient manner.
- Work closely with Multi Service operatives and Property Surveyor to ensure that damage, repairs, property condition or health and safety concerns are identified and actioned accordingly.
- Purchase items as and when necessary for the provision of day to day and emergency equipment, managing and recording expenditure as appropriate.
- Service of legal documents and complete certificate of service. Taking responsibility for the co-ordination and preparation of case files, paying court costs in legal proceedings including intentionality, non-priority, rent arrears, discharge of duty. Instruct legal services and act as the Council’s main witness in related court matters.
NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via job[email protected] by quoting the job reference and job title exactly.
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.
Please quote the Job Title & Vacancy Reference No. in your application, or we will be unable to match your CV to the role being applied for.
Other “Essential Requirements” – Please check to ensure that your CV addresses the following items:
Qualifications:
- Educated to GCSE standards or equivalent for English and Maths at Grade C or above or equivalent qualifications/experience.
Experience:
- Experience of working in a housing/homelessness or similar front-line, customer focussed role.
- Experience of working as part of a team and in partnership with internal and external partners to achieve successful outcome for customers.
- Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
Knowledge:
- Have a good awareness of risk assessment and support planning, and a strong awareness of safeguarding and be able to ensure good practice in staff and client safety.
- Working knowledge of housing and homelessness legislation, welfare reform and benefits and how this impacts on homelessness, support needs and services available to vulnerable clients. Good knowledge of and sensitivity to the support needs of people experiencing homelessness.
- Good knowledge of managing tenancies or property licences, taking prompt and effective action to manage any breaches of licence conditions in TA through liaison with other council departments (ASBIT, Legal, Incomes and Prevention), managing void turnarounds.
- Good knowledge of housing and homelessness legislation (Part 6 and 7 of the Housing Act 1996, Homelessness Reduction Act) and be able to interpret these into working practices.
- Organise, co-ordinate and attend Bailiff Evictions and Quiet Possessions.
- Participate in the out of hour’s emergency call-out rota for temporary accommodation including being a point of contact and a responsible key holder for all temporary accommodation during that time.
Skills & Abilities:
- Strong verbal and written communication with an ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of colleagues, clients and other agencies in a variety of means.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, the ability to empathise and give appropriate advice and assistance to a wide range of customers, including the most vulnerable, while managing customer expectation utilising strong and effective negotiation skills.
- Ability to exhibit strong resilience in potentially challenging or crisis situations and respond effectively. To be able to remain calm and professional at all times and to conduct and influence sensitive interviews firmly and fairly and achieve successful outcomes.
- Able to drive and have a UK driving licence.
- Strong IT skills including Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).
***Qualification details and any other experience/skills relevant to the job role to help support your application (and help us to help you!) – please give full details within your CV document.
Unless the DBS requirement stated above is for a Basic Disclosure, your DBS must be either through us or be accompanied by a subscription to the DBS updating service.
Full Driving licence, access to a vehicle or access to means of mobility support.
SC
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Your CV needs to be current with your most recent role. We won’t be able to submit it with any unexplained gaps in employment. It will save time and improve your chances of success if we can put your CV forward immediately without having to ask for revisions.
Your CV must cover the “Essential Requirements” of the role. Ideally you will address the “Essential Requirements” on each job description page directly, in a bullet point list. Please include any DBS details and other qualifications called for.
Your CV should clearly state that you are available to start work either immediately, or at short notice. In general, our clients are unable to work with notice periods of more than 1 week from the point at which a role is offered, 2 weeks at the very most.
We do not put forward covering letters, so please ensure that your CV in contains all relevant information being called for.
We recommend that you consider sending us a CV suitably tailored CV for each role that you apply for. Job board aggregator sites will generally store only one version of your CV, which can be a bit limiting, so this is to your advantage.