Private Rented Sector Access Officer

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 assist those in housing need to access Private Rented Sector accommodation to create long-term sustainable tenancies.

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 landlords and some of our most vulnerable residents. You must be able to learn and develop your knowledge required for this role and be able to travel independently around the Borough.

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.

1. You will liaise with landlords and Agents to secure properties in the borough for low-income homeless households, assess and match customers to suitable properties and ensure tenancies are appropriate, affordable and sustainable.
2. You will provide support to prevent customers from becoming homeless and help customers secure settled accommodation in the private sector who are already living in temporary accommodation.
3. You will have experience of homeless legislation and working with those faced with homelessness, to provide excellent outcomes for vulnerable clients, and high-quality customer services. Assessing customers’ support needs in a holistic manner and refer to appropriate agencies.
4. You will also undertake assessments as to the suitability of our clients to access private rented accommodation and a range of activities to help them resettle into PRS, which will include practical elements of independent living such as paying rent, setting up and managing utilities, liaising with landlords and other agencies.
5. Undertake inspections and advise landlords on property standards and adhering to relevant housing and legislative requirements relating to the PRS and produce appropriate schedules of works where required, acting as a point of contact for private landlords.
6. Complete sign-ups with clients including the preparation of appropriate materials including inventories, tenancy agreements and other relevant information.
7. Develop and deliver incentives and landlord promotional activities to increase the number of landlords and/or properties on the scheme.

About You

1. You have experience of working in a customer-oriented environment involving complex and diverse client groups and can understand and apply relevant legislation in your day-to-day work, including landlord and tenant law, homelessness and welfare benefits, while effectively managing customer expectations.
2. You are an excellent communicator to engage effectively with a broad range of people to influence, negotiate, persuade, build trusting relationships and devise value for money solutions to complex problems.
3. You act with integrity, take personal responsibility, work well under pressure and handle stress effectively while maintaining high levels of motivation and enthusiasm to secure new business opportunities using proactive and creative solutions.
4. You work independently, proactively and flexibly, while being highly organised to prioritise conflicting demands, making effective use of IT systems to record concise, factual information and data.
5. You are a high-performing individual who works collaboratively with others, adapting to meet a range of changing needs while achieving targets and service objectives and make the team the very best it can be.

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 work in a forward-thinking and progressive housing department?

Essential for The Role:

• Basic DBS

Closing date: 10 March 2025.

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