Senior Housing Regulatory Assurance Officer in Oxford

An exciting opportunity to be part of our new Housing Strategy and Performance Team as a Housing Regulatory Assurance Officer. You will support the development, delivery and implementation of a quality assurance and improvement programme across the Council's Housing Directorate, to ensure that we deliver core functions in accordance with regulation and realise our continuous improvement goals.

Your professional accountability is to provide assurance that the council is compliant with all statutory and regulatory housing requirements, developing improvement plans and remediations where deficient, taking enabling and direct actions to ensure that we deliver a high quality, safe, modern and preventative housing service, which has a positive impact on residents. You will be highly organised, an innovative and intelligent problem solver, conversant with project and programme management skills and an excellent communicator, able to prepare strategies, formal reports for members and presentations for colleagues and residents.

Role purpose

You have significant knowledge and experience of preparing and implementing policies, procedures, formal reports and presentations in a local authority setting. You have excellent investigative and problem-solving skills, can spot flaws in an argument but take a collaborative approach to finding solutions and are able to operate effectively through prioritisation, delegation of tasks and organisation of available resources, with experience of managing or supervising staff. You will have guided and contributed to service and process design, continuous improvement, and performance management, including carrying out service reviews, developing improvement plans, and implementing and monitoring these using project and programme methodologies. You communicate effectively with a range of audiences, including tenants, elected members and colleagues of all levels; you will have used this to engage with customers and respond to their feedback. You are committed to the public service ethos and putting residents first; but can balance this with emotional resilience and commercial awareness, to operate efficiently and secure value for money.

Role responsibilities and main duties

• Lead the management, planning and coordination of housing regulatory compliance and service improvement activities, working in partnership with a wide range of colleagues, providing leadership and delegating tasks to them as necessary.
• Represent the housing service corporately and with partners, deputising for your manager and Director as required.
• Lead and establish a creative and innovative approach to delivering improvements and assurance across the housing service, setting appropriate objectives and performance targets to define your success, using benchmarking to reflect on your practice and learn from others.
• Working with the data lead, develop a highly collaborative team approach to provide expert diagnostic, interpretation, advice, support and challenge to the wider housing service to drive up standards across the directorate, ensure statutory and legislative compliance and improve the customer experience for residents.
• Holding others to account, set standards and procedures to ensure compliance with all council, regulatory, and statutory requirements, including in-depth knowledge and interpretation of the Regulator of Social Housing's Consumer Standards, identifying potential issues early and at source, so that they may be prevented, successfully resolved, or escalated as appropriate.
• Deliver and present work items and written reports on time and to a high standard, ensuring all content is factual, accurate and evidence-based. Reports may include regulatory compliance updates, consumer standards reviews, service improvement analyses, Ombudsman trend reports, risk assessments, performance dashboards and briefing papers for senior leadership, Members and residents.
• Provide line-management responsibility for staff involved in compliance, assurance or service improvement, including allocating work, assessing performance, and supporting professional development.
• Demonstrate and continue to develop advanced, specialist knowledge of housing law, regulation, custom and practice across housing management, repairs and maintenance and housing development. To serve as a council expert on such matters and execute decisions that deal appropriately with the legal, reputational, and financial risks of operating a housing service dedicated to the needs of our residents.
• Operate effectively in a highly changeable environment with multiple competing priorities; oversee and mitigate risks to the service and staff; be prepared to travel and work outside to engage with our tenants and residents on their estates.
• Undertake other duties commensurate with the purpose of the post, in particular to help the council's response to emergencies, undertake council and resident meetings outside of normal office hours, and assist with the conduct of elections.