Housing Officer

Job Description

Housing Officer

Contract: Permanent / Full Time

Salary: £29,000-33,500 per annum depending on experience

Hours: 37 hours per week – (Mon-Fri) agile working. We work hard to provide flexibility of hours to benefit both our teams and customers.

We have a great new opportunity for an experienced Housing Officer to join our team.

At Squared we pride ourselves on being a great place to work, where everyone feels fairly treated and enjoys their work in a welcoming and friendly environment. We’re a not-for-profit housing association that has been providing affordable housing in Luton and South Bedfordshire since 1962.

Our Homes department is a vital division of Squared providing more than just housing to our customers who are most in need. We work closely with a range of partners including the Department for Work and Pensions, Luton Borough Council and Central Bedfordshire Council. We have around 370 homes for independent living for people in need in our local community, spread across Luton, Dunstable, Caddington and Barton-le-Clay which range from bedsits and one-bedroom flats to houses with four or more bedrooms.

We offer so much more than just a roof over your head. Our Homes team support our customers to manage and sustain their tenancy whilst offering guidance and encouragement to inspire them to fulfil their personal aspirations with the long-term aim of moving into a privately rented or owned home.

The Role

You will be the main point of contact and will deliver an end-to-end tenancy management service, proactively managing the customer relationship. You will ensure our customers’ needs are met and exceeded whilst searching for innovative ways to enable as many people as possible to benefit from our limited housing resource. You will provide support and advice to other members of the team. The role is responsible for all aspects of tenancy management, and are responsibilities include:-

• Embed a great service culture that promotes and embraces high levels of tenant and community engagement and involvement; and that reflect Squared’s values. Providing a flexible and responsive service to meet the needs of our customers.
• Assessing the needs of customers applying for housing through choice based letting and our transfer process.
• Rent arrears control including filing particulars of claim and representation at court.
• Closely monitoring void levels, rent collection, rent arrears and other key performance indicators; taking action to ensure targets are met and relevant Squared policies and procedures are followed.
• Ensuring risk issues relating to ASB are considered, cases are proactively managed and that tenants and stakeholders are encouraged to address conflicts using self-help techniques.
• Ensuring safeguarding issues are addressed in accordance with Squared’s Safeguarding policy.
• Estate inspections: Inspecting communal areas and estates, raising and following up on appropriate corrective actions to customer resolution.
• Estate and facilities management: Providing a responsive and efficient estate, block and facilities management service to ensure residents’ communal areas and neighbourhoods are pleasant, well-maintained and safe place to live.
• Empty homes monitoring and control, including carrying out pre-void inspections.
• ASB: Tackling and reducing the effects of anti-social behaviour on estates and in communal areas
• Escalating cases through the legal framework as necessary; including attending and representing Squared as Landlord at court and liaising with Solicitors when necessary.
• Keeping on top of housing sector knowledge: including knowledge around property management, service charges, health and safety, personal safety and working with vulnerable people.
• Lettings and allocation of property, including different types of tenancy agreements.
• Staying up to date with working knowledge of welfare benefits and welfare reforms and ensuring the team is updated.
• Generic housing management queries
• Liaising with all relevant external agencies, local authorities and other partners, including other Squared departments and stakeholders; to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction with our services

Due to travelling between sites it is essential that you have a full clean UK driving licence with access to your own vehicle for work purposes. Please note, this role will be subject to a DBS check.

The Person

As an experienced housing professional, you will be able to hit the ground running to manage our housing portfolio. You will come with strong housing knowledge having worked in similar roles having managed all the above listed elements of the role.

You will be used to building strong working relationships, not only with your customers but with other teams within the organisation and external partners to ensure we are meeting our business objectives and providing the best service possible.

So, if you welcome the challenge, and are capable of marrying strong self-management and administrative skills with empathy and support for individuals yet capable of being tough when needed, we’d love to hear from you.

In return we offer a host of benefits including:-

• 33 days annual leave (including bank holidays)
• Health CashPlan
• Contributory Pension
• Life Assurance
• Holiday Buying/Selling
• Perks at Work shopping discounts/cashback
• Free parking at our Bramingham Office

#J-18808-Ljbffr