Housing Team Administrator

Location: Hybrid / Hammersmith, London, UK

Job type: Permanent / Full-time

Sector and subsector: Housing | Housing Association

Annual Fixed salary: £29,350 per annum

Hours: Full Time, 35 hours per week including Tuesdays as mandatory office day

Contract type: Permanent

Line Manager: Housing Manager

Direct Reports: None

About Us

Women’s Pioneer Housing own almost 1000 properties in eight boroughs in west and north-west London: Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Ealing, Wandsworth, Hillingdon, Harrow, and Westminster. 80% are studio and one‑bedroom flats, mostly in converted Victorian buildings, many of which are listed or in conservation areas. There are also 90 leasehold flats, and a small but growing number of higher rental investment properties that fund our future development plans. Our sheltered housing for single women over 60 is located in Kensington & Chelsea, where we are the largest sheltered housing provider. We have 178 flats for women over 60 who wish to live independently in their own home but with added security and back‑up support on site and on call.

Our Vision

For all single women across London to have access to a safe, secure, and affordable home.

Our Mission

To offer single women access to safe, secure and good quality affordable homes and services that enable women to live a good quality of life. To influence other housing providers so they understand the needs of single women and offer services that meet this need.

Our Values

We put our residents first, nurture great relationships through open and trusted communication, we value equality, inclusivity, and empowerment, and we provide a respectful and safe environment to all members and residents of WPH.

Role

To support our growth and continue our commitment to providing excellent customer services, the Team Administrator (Housing Services) is a role which supports our people and continuous service improvement as we embark on this new, exciting chapter of growth. In this role you will support the housing services team by managing data and databases, analysing performance, providing accurate statistics and maintaining systems so that our work is driven with strong data integrity and robust systems of information. You will also support the Director of Operations bringing broader administrative skills using MS Office packages to provide a wider range of day to day admin services to our customer services team including organising meetings, taking minutes and responding to contacts. There are a range of interesting projects supporting our corporate calendar where you will be able to diversify in how you apply these skills.

You may already be working in a customer‑focused environment or public/social setting and have a track record of providing excellent administrative services, including accurate minute taking and effective communications skills enabling you to respond to telephone and written contacts with a high degree of professionalism. You will have at least intermediate MS Office skills, particularly Word, Excel and PowerPoint with a working knowledge of CRM systems or have the aptitude to learn. A good understanding of social housing is preferred but not essential. Accountability, communicative initiative, and being able to recognise the relative importance of tasks to ensure deadlines are met and you deliver on your commitment to others are the attitudes and behaviours that have as much importance as your experience. You must bring respect for our residents and a commitment to supporting our vision, mission and values. We are a small team, and work together to deliver our shared objectives. If you are passionate about bringing excellence to your work, enjoy collaborating with others and can demonstrate commitment in all that you do, we would love to hear from you.

Purpose of the Role

To provide administrative support to the housing team across a broad range of service areas to help deliver excellent services to residents. To work with colleagues across departments to deliver the Women’s Pioneer Housing Corporate Plan.

Key Relationships

• Internal: All staff within Women’s Pioneer but primarily those with admin responsibilities within property and finance teams.
• External: Referral agencies, letting agents, local authorities, contractors, tenants and the general public.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide administrative support to the Housing Team in all areas of their work including arrears management, antisocial behaviour, voids and lettings and resident involvement.
• Assist the Housing Team to achieve agreed performance targets for arrears management by taking payments and managing former tenant arrears accounts, including liaising with credit collection agencies.
• Support rent collection by taking lead on liaison with Finance Team to collate accurate and up‑to‑date electronic information to update local authorities and DWP on rent and service charge increases.
• Ensure council tax is paid promptly by collating all council tax bills, keep logs and passing to finance for payment.
• Ensure the six year document retention policy is adhered to for documents pertaining to former tenants.
• Maintain records of voids and lettings by liaising with colleagues to ensure weekly lettings minutes and voids log are up to date and complete and provide void returns for local authority partners.
• Support future tenants housing opportunities through working with colleagues to open the waiting list once a year, monitor applications and support outcome correspondence.
• Manage Women’s Pioneer transfer list including undertaking an annual review to ensure it is current and accurate.
• Maintain up-to-date stock of stationery and collate sign‑up packs for Housing Team.
• Being a reliable point of contact to ensure the timely payment of supplier invoices by accurately recording goods and services ordered, reconciling orders with invoices and resolving queries relating to invoices through liaison with suppliers and/or colleagues.
• Act as ICT super‑user and be responsible for ICT including system management and other projects as required, providing support for staff where necessary.
• To attend and accurately record minutes for quarterly committee meetings held during evening hours.

Customer Service

• Ensure excellent initial experience of residents by updating new tenant details promptly on to the correct systems, arrange induction visit, 6 week visit, 6 month and 9 month visit with Housing Officers.
• Be adept at dealing with both calls focusing primarily on tenancy matters but supporting the customer service team by providing cover as required to other customer service areas.
• Manage complex customer contacts and complaints with a can‑do approach displaying excellent customer care.
• Respond to written points of contact in adherence to good quality, responsive literacy standards and guidelines and ensure accurate input of relevant data (notes, actions, agreed plans with customers) into Housing Management Systems.
• Achieve high levels of Customer Satisfaction results and help to reduce the level of complaints.
• Engage proactively with resident feedback to inform service improvement and use this feedback to help improve your own performance and to improve WPH policies and procedures.

Personal Commitment and Development

• To keep up to date with changes in your job role and undertake training as directed, adopting new ways of working to ensure continuous improvement.
• To adopt and promote a flexible approach to work undertaking other areas of responsibility as required to ensure the overall strategic objectives and business priorities are delivered.
• To work collaboratively with staff across the Association to solve problems and further organisational objectives, including contributing to organisation‑wide initiatives and activities.
• To contribute to raising standards across the organisation, identifying where improvements can be made to support service processes and policies and implementing changes.
• To comply with all Women’s Pioneer policies and procedures and all legal requirements and regulatory standards, including being fully responsible for your health and safety and safeguarding of residents and visitors.
• To contribute positively to the annual appraisal process including identifying development needs, taking ownership of and driving professional development by supporting your own learning and development with the support of your line manager.
• Work at all times in accordance with WPH values and our Equality and Diversity policy.
• To proactively manage your workload, seeking guidance where necessary, so that competing priorities are identified and managed effectively.
• To maintain confidentiality at all times, in relation to business sensitive and personal information and ensure compliance is upheld with regards to the rules of the Data Protection Act and by ensuring information and records are either; shredded or safely stored.

Additional Information

These are your main areas of responsibility, but you may be required to perform other duties as we may reasonably require from time to time. There may be occasions when you are required to attend meetings outside of the usual working hours and to carry out work in a lone working environment.

Experience, Knowledge and Qualifications

• Experience of working in an office environment or similar team setting.
• Experience of MS Office, databases, social media and websites.
• Understanding of housing environment including supply and demand for housing in London.

Skills and Abilities

• Manage own workload with minimal direction.
• Good verbal, written and numerical skills.
• Able to work under pressure with varied workload and competing demands.
• Ability to work flexibly and respond quickly to changing demands while meeting deadlines.
• Ability to manage own workload.
• Commitment to high standards of customer service and customer involvement.
• Highly numerate.
• High level of IT skills including knowledge of Microsoft Office and other such software packages.
• Good administration, organisation and planning skills.
• Commitment to collaborative working internally with colleagues and externally with partners to ensure a quality service.
• Ability to deal with difficult issues and achieve positive outcomes.
• Confident when dealing with public, colleagues and external agencies.

Personal Attributes

• Understanding of and commitment to equality and diversity in housing.
• Confident when dealing with public, colleagues and external agencies.
• Understanding of the needs of vulnerable clients.
• Willing to learn for self and team.
• Willing to deal with and solve problems.
• Has a “can do” attitude and approach to service delivery.

Benefits

• Hybrid working approach: Welcome to work in the office, at home, or on site based on activities. On Tuesdays, all staff attend the office. Staff are required to be in the office at least two days a week.
• Flexible working: The formal flexi time working arrangement allows accrued hours to be taken later, up to 2 days every four weeks, or half days. This can equate to up to 26 days leave per year in addition to your annual leave entitlement.
• Birthday Leave: After probation, you are entitled to an additional day‑off on or around your birthday.
• Pension: Auto‑enrolment onto the Group Pension Scheme – 5% employee contribution, 8% employer contribution.
• Annual Leave: 26 days rising to 29 days after 5 years’ service. Bank holidays are paid non‑working days. The office closes for Christmas from 1 pm on Christmas Eve until the New Year.
• Death in Service: If you pass away while an active member of staff on the pension scheme, your beneficiaries receive four times your gross annual salary.
• Employee Assistance Programme, Physiotherapy, Remote GP, Mental Health Support, etc. are available to all employees.

Equal Opportunities

Women’s Pioneer Housing is an equal opportunities employer. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates regardless of gender, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, age, or any other protected characteristic.