Housing Officer - South East Locality Office in Edinburgh

The City of Edinburgh Council’s Homelessness Prevention and Housing Options Team (HP&HOT) is at the frontline of tackling homelessness in Edinburgh. Working across the following locations:

• Northwest Office – 8 West Pilton Gardens, Edinburgh
• Southeast Office – 40 Captain’s Road, Edinburgh
• Northeast Office – 101 Niddrie Mains Road, Edinburgh
• Southwest Office – 10 Westside Plaza, Edinburgh

Please note that at any point you may be required to work in any of the above locations across the city.

The officer will work in a statutory service and be fully responsible for providing tailored housing options advice, information and support referrals to either prevent homelessness or to enable assessed homeless people to access suitable housing as quickly as possible. They will fulfil the Council’s duties by working to legislative and good practice requirements and in collaboration with many other statutory services and partner organisations to make key statutory decisions about customers' entitlement to services.

You will be required to participate on a rota and cover basis whilst working as part of an Emergency Duty and New Appointment team in the localities. This is an extremely busy and pressurised service, and you will often need to provide cover in a variety of locations across Edinburgh or reschedule your diary at very short notice to ensure our statutory duties to homeless households are achieved. As such, this role requires you to display resilience daily and the ability to take ownership and responsibility of applicable tasks when working in an often-challenging role with households who are experiencing crisis situations.

The successful candidate will therefore have a proven track record of working within a challenging frontline service. We are also keen to appoint candidates who have a strong knowledge of the social housing landscape in Edinburgh and understand key homelessness legislation and policies as well.

This post is regulated work with children and/or protected adults under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007. The preferred candidate will be required to join the PVG Scheme or undergo a PVG Scheme update check. Where an individual has spent a continuous period of 3 months or more out with the UK in the last 5 years, an Overseas Criminal Record Check will be required. You will be required to provide this check. An unconditional offer of employment and commencement in the post will be subject to the outcome of both these pre-employment checks being deemed satisfactory.

We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce where everyone feels valued and able to be their best. We particularly encourage applications from women for senior roles, as well as people from minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities or neurodivergent people, care experienced people, carers and LGBT+ people across all levels of the organisation, all of whom are currently underrepresented. All applicants will be considered fairly based on skills and experience. Disabled and care-experienced applicants who meet the minimum job criteria will be guaranteed an interview.

As part of our goal to improve organisational culture and create a great place to work together for the people of Edinburgh, we want to make sure we're recruiting the best people. We’re interested not only in your skills and experience but also in your approach to work. Therefore, part of our interview process will be an assessment of how you would bring Our Behaviours of Respect, Integrity and Flexibility into your ways of working.

You can find out more on Our Behaviours web page. Our salary range typically reflects the initial starting salary and annually increases until it reaches the top of the range. Happy to talk flexible working.