Hostel Caretaker

Hostel Caretaker

About us at Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

About The Role

This is an exciting opportunity to join Homelessness, Independence and Preventative Services, Property Procurement Accommodation Service, which adopts a preventative approach across the housing, health and social care agendas. Your primary focus will be to ensure the safe operation and upkeep of all Council owned hostel sites.

You must be professional, energetic and enthusiastic as we are interested in what you can bring to help us improve and develop our services to support some of our most vulnerable residents. You will need to travel independently around the Borough to carry out hostel visits and carry out minor repair works.

About The Team You’ll Be Working In

This is an exciting and busy role that is at the centre of the Councils response to homelessness. The service is developing and progressing our agenda to reduce the use of temporary accommodation and achieve more upstream prevention outcomes.

• You will ensure the safe operation and upkeep of all Council owned hostel sites used for stage one temporary accommodation to place homeless households, including St Catherines House.
• You will ensure that hostel grounds and communal areas are presentable, clean, tidy and residents occupying the hostel accommodation are supported to report any concerns about the cleanliness of the premises to you.
• You will conduct handyperson minor repairs, changing light bulbs, refixing cupboards, door handles etc various regular cleaning duties, move furniture walk around the buildings ensuring the buildings are safe and tidy doing regular checks of high footfall areas such communal entrances, walkways and kitchens and bathroom facilitates.
• You will work as part of a team and on your own initiative, to liaise with the repairs team on void hostel units to be available for reletting to the required standards.
• You will carry out regular fire alarm and emergency lights testing and fire drills ensuring occupants details are updated and placed in a central log for emergency services to access in an event of an incident.
• You will monitor the wellbeing of any vulnerable residents housed within the hostel accommodation and inform the relevant Housing Solutions and Independence Officer of any concerns.
• Work closely with any agencies providing support to vulnerable residents housed in hostel accommodation.
• You will develop and maintain a knowledge of basic and specialist cleaning techniques and practises, materials and tools. This includes the use of ladders, industrial cleaning machines, and chemicals which are approved under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations, ensuring chemicals, materials and protective clothing are correctly used and stored in accordance with legislative and Council Health and safety procedures.
• You will work with the repairs and planning teams to develop long term plans for the hostel including cyclical work programmes, any major refurbishment or redevelopment of the site.

About You:

1. You have extensive knowledge and experience of working with vulnerable people, of leading multi-disciplinary work involving complex needs and diverse client groups and an expert knowledge of homelessness and associated legislation.
2. You have experience of successfully managing staff and are a collaborative leader, acting with integrity and building trusting relationships, operating effectively through prioritisation, delegation and efficient use of available resources to deliver value for money services.
3. You are an expert communicator who engages effectively with a broad range of people, including applicants, colleagues, and elected members, to motivate, influence, negotiate and persuade and achieve multi-disciplinary outcomes to meet wide ranging needs.
4. You are a dynamic decision maker who leads and motivates others to deliver a high performing service achieving excellent results, which can flex and adapt to the changing need of residents, integrating digital service solutions balanced with bespoke solutions for vulnerable residents.
5. You are a creative and analytical problem solver who takes responsibility to see problems through to successful resolution, ensuring your work and the work of the team achieve service outcomes that support the shared goals of the council, while operating with financial acumen.
6. A Basic DBS check will be required.

If the points below resonate with you, we’d love you to put in an application:

• Are you passionate about customer services?
• Are you an experienced homelessness professional?
• Are you looking to working in a forward thinking and progressive housing department?

Closing date: 10 March 2025.