Head of Property Management in Bedford

At Places for People, we hire People, not numbers! So, if you like the sound of one of our jobs, please apply - you could be just who we're looking for! Of course, experience and track record are important, but we’re more interested in hiring someone that embodies our People Promises. That’s someone that does the right thing, is enthusiastic and motivated to grow, believes in Community spirit, is respectful and enjoys their work. As the UK’s leading Social Enterprise, we’re dedicated to creating inclusive and thriving Communities for both our Customers and Employees.

Key Accountabilities:

• Developing and delivering property strategies for complex mixed use and mixed tenure estates to ensure long-term financial viability, safety, and a positive customer experience.
• Overseeing the creation and management of service charge budgets, including overseeing income collection and cashflow for mixed use and mixed tenure buildings.
• Ensuring full compliance with all safety related contracts and requirements.
• Acting as the key advisor for new mixed use and mixed tenure developments, guiding decisions on management structures, safety, cost recovery, service charge setting, and long term financial planning.
• Building strong partnerships with customers, stakeholders, and partners, and working effectively across teams through matrix working.
• Designing and producing reporting and dashboards to clearly show estate-level financial performance and customer experience metrics.
• Monitoring service standards and planning ahead for buildings with at least 25 units and multiple tenure types, ensuring consistent quality and performance across the estate.

Essential Criteria:

• Proven ability to manage multi tenure and multi-client estates, ensuring consistent standards and effective decision making across varied property types and customer groups.
• Strong experience working with and managing external partners, contractors, and third party providers, ensuring performance, compliance, and value for money.
• Skilled in building and influencing relationships with internal stakeholders, navigating matrix environments and collaborating across disciplines to resolve issues and drive outcomes.
• Robust property management expertise with a comprehensive understanding of UK housing legislation, governance, safeguarding, data protection, court processes, and housing standards.

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience with Anaplan system is an advantage but not essential.

More about you:

You need strong property management skills, particularly across residential tenures, and the ability to lead cross-disciplinary teams while directing financial and colleague resources to resolve issues effectively. You must be highly organised, able to manage multiple tasks, use your initiative, and work both independently and within a multi-disciplinary team. You should have direct experience managing external contractor and partner contracts, alongside a comprehensive understanding of UK housing laws, including landlord–tenant legislation, governance, court processes, data protection, safeguarding, and housing standards. To excel in this role, you should already have—or be willing to work toward—a relevant qualification such as those offered by RICS. Strong relationship-building skills and good problem-solving ability are also beneficial.

Benefits:

We are a large diverse and ambitious business, which will give you all the challenge you could wish for. We know that there’s always more we can do to make you smile, that’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package with each role, yours will include:

• Competitive salary, with a salary review yearly
• Pension with matched contributions up to 7%
• Company Car/Car Allowance
• Excellent holiday package – up to 35 days annual leave with the option to buy or sell leave
• Cashback plan for healthcare costs – up to £500 saving per year
• A bonus scheme for all colleagues at 10%
• Training and development
• Extra perks including huge discounts and offers from shops, cinemas and much more.

What’s next?

If you meet the criteria and are ready to make the next step in your career then click apply. You will be redirected to our careers site where you can discover more about the role, read a full job description and apply directly to us. As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we offer a guaranteed interview to candidates who are disabled, neurodiverse, or have served in the Armed Forces, provided they meet the essential criteria for the role. If you would like to be considered under this scheme, please indicate this in your application. We are dedicated to creating a supportive and accessible recruitment process for all. We are committed to creating an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application or interview experience, please let us know. We’re happy to work with you to ensure you have the opportunity to perform at your best. If you are a Places for People customer and you’re looking for support with your application, please contact our skills and employment team. We understand the importance of a supportive and inclusive work culture so please talk to us at interview about flexibility you may need. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want, but we promise not to judge you for asking. For this role we are open to discussing the possibility of reduced hours, flexible start and finish times or compressed hours.

Safeguarding:

At Places for People, safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. We are committed to creating safe communities for our customers and colleagues by protecting children, young people, and adults at risk from harm, abuse, and neglect. We follow robust safeguarding policies and procedures, ensuring all employees, volunteers, and contractors uphold the highest standards of safeguarding and accountability. Our recruitment process includes pre-employment checks, including Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks where applicable, to promote a safe and secure working environment. By joining Places for People, you are expected to contribute to our safeguarding culture, following our policies and reporting concerns to protect those in our communities.