Home Adaptations Officer in Colchester

Colchester is Britain’s First City, and Britain’s Newest City. A wealth of heritage buildings, coastline and Constable countryside surrounds a modern City that is rapidly changing to match our thriving population growth. We have a new vision to modernise our services to match the future needs of the city and our next generations as our team culture.

The Council are seeking a Home Adaptations Officer to support vulnerable residents to remain safe and independent in their home by providing an effective technical surveying and advice service to enable adaptation, improvement and repair work to dwellings with grant or loan aid.

Duties of the role

We are expanding our Healthy Homes team in order to deliver a range of financial assistance schemes to improve housing conditions. We have a large Disabled Facilities Grants programme and offer other discretionary forms of financial assistance to residents.

We are looking for an individual that can manage a busy workload and work with the other members of the team including the Home Adaptations Officer, Caseworkers, Coordinator and Senior Occupational Therapist to process grant and loan enquiries through from receipt, property inspection, preparing detailed specifications, detailed technical drawings, liaising with contractors to obtain quotes, submitting appropriate applications for permissions and monitoring works through to completion.

Colchester City Council recognises that housing conditions are a key determinant of health and wellbeing and that a citizens environment plays a key role in protecting, sustaining and improving people’s quality of life.

Our approach is to consider the home environment and individuals holistically and the Healthy Homes Team makes use of the full range of Council resources available. We work closely with front line health and social care professionals to identify and remove housing related barriers to better health, particularly for our vulnerable residents.

Qualifications and skills required

To be successful in this role, you will hold a BSc/MSc or CIEH Diploma in Environmental Health, or hold a recognised formal qualification (e.g. BTEC, HNC) in housing or surveying and extensive relevant experience and working knowledge of building construction.

We also hope that you are Certified as competent to conduct HHSRS surveys/assessments and enforcement, registration with the Environmental Health Officers’ Registration Board (or Scottish equivalent), Membership of a relevant professional body e.g. CIEH or CIH.

The team is flexible and resourced to accommodate a range of candidates from a new graduate, through to an experienced and fully qualified professional. Applicants will be invited to interview if they clearly understand the role and demonstrate proactive communication abilities, possess excellent organisational skills and can “self-manage” to prioritise their work with commitment to high standards of delivery.

In return, we are happy to talk about flexible working arrangements. You could blend home, remote, office and site working, and work/life balance flexibility. In addition to the basic salary, a Market Forces Supplement may be applied to this role to increase this for eligible candidates. Other employee benefits for this role include:

• Excellent Local Government Pension Scheme choice.
• Annual Leave entitlement up to 26 days a year.
• Additional leave on the 8 public holidays.
• Extra statutory leave for 2 days during the festive season.
• The ability to add up to 2 “flex days” off each month.
• Options to purchase additional days of holiday.
• Our new “Stream”, which allows pre‑tax saving with attractive interest rates; or can be used to take your salary early if an unexpected personal expense arises.
• Contribution towards professional memberships.
• Mileage and subsistence allowance payments.
• The popular “Vine Extras” discount scheme for retail, goods and services.
• Tax‑free cycle schemes.
• Discounted fitness classes, gym and/or swimming pool memberships.
• Reduced cost private health care options.
• Staff incentives for events, museums and exhibitions.
• Diverse learning opportunities, including transferable skills, “soft skills” and ways to open up career progression routes using apprenticeships, coaching, mentoring, leadership and management qualifications.
• Employee Assistance Programmes providing confidential support networks.
• A variety of in‑house health and wellbeing activities, groups and programmes.

For an informal discussion about this role, please contact Jon Parsons, Healthy Homes Manager at jon.parsons@colchester.gov.uk or on 01206 282590.