Principal Housing Surveyor in Kingston upon Hull

Join an organisation that puts people first. Where everyone has opportunities to grow, and everyone can make a difference to the lives of people in Hull.

Job Description Summary: This is a Full Time, Permanent Position. Lead the improvement of homes. Shape services. Make a visible difference. Hull City Council is proud to invest in the quality, safety and sustainability of our homes and neighbourhoods. We’re now looking for a Principal Housing Surveyor to join our Planned & Cyclical Maintenance Team and play a vital leadership role in delivering high‐quality maintenance and refurbishment works across the city.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced housing or building professional to combine technical expertise, people leadership and strategic influence — improving outcomes for tenants while shaping how housing investment services are delivered.

About the role: As Principal Housing Surveyor, you’ll lead and manage a skilled team of surveyors and technical staff, delivering complex planned maintenance and refurbishment programmes that directly improve the condition of our housing stock and residents’ quality of life. Working closely with Programme Managers and senior colleagues, you’ll support the development and delivery of planned and cyclical works, contribute to wider housing strategy, and drive continuous improvement across service delivery, performance and compliance. You’ll also play an important role in ensuring the Council meets its statutory landlord responsibilities, maintaining excellent standards of safety, quality and value for money.

What you’ll be responsible for:

• Leading and managing a team of professional surveyors and support staff
• Delivering planned and cyclical maintenance and refurbishment works across council housing
• Supporting Programme Managers in developing and delivering investment programmes
• Managing contractor performance, quality standards and KPIs
• Ensuring compliance with housing legislation, safety standards and regulatory requirements
• Managing budgets and monitoring expenditure across revenue and capital programmes
• Providing expert technical advice on housing maintenance and improvement works
• Driving service improvement, innovation and value for money
• Engaging effectively with tenants, residents, contractors, colleagues and elected members.

About you: You’ll be an experienced housing or building professional with strong technical knowledge and proven leadership skills, comfortable managing people, performance and complex workloads in a public‐facing environment. You’ll bring:

• Extensive experience in housing maintenance, refurbishment or construction
• Strong people‐management skills, with the ability to motivate and develop teams
• Sound knowledge of housing legislation, building standards and contract management
• Confidence managing budgets, performance targets and contractor relationships
• Excellent communication and stakeholder‐management skills
• A proactive, improvement‐focused mindset with the confidence to lead change.

You’ll hold a degree or equivalent experience, ideally supported by an HNC/HND in Building Construction or a related discipline, and demonstrate a clear commitment to continuing professional development.

ROLE AND PURPOSE: To manage and lead a multi functional team of professional staff in delivering complex, innovative, repairs and refurbishment works across the city in relation to maintaining and improving the quality of the Authorities housing stock. To support the Programme Manager to develop, implement and manage new initiatives which contribute to the delivery of the Neighbourhoods and Housing Strategy and Asset Management Plan. To contribute towards the formulation and delivery of the Neighbourhoods and Housing Strategy and area based maintenance and improvement projects. To lead and provide professional technical and managerial expertise for the purpose of delivering Corporate and Neighbourhoods and Housing Strategy objectives and associated policies. To manage a team of Surveyors carrying out a range of duties required by Housing Investment Services and promote continuous improvement to service delivery.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Strategy: Identify, evaluate and recommend initiatives for implementation within Neighbourhoods and Housing Strategy in order to maximise the opportunities of best value planning.
• Customer Focus: Appraise and determine solutions to operational and technical problems through discussions/negotiations with tenants, residents, contractors and partners ensuring projects are delivered on time and a high quality of service is maintained.
• Performance Management: Assess contractor capability and implement quality management systems to monitor contractor performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and compliance with contract documentation and schedules. To implement a performance management system for the service ensuring effective operational service delivery and continuous improvements in service quality and overall performance.
• Leadership: To lead and provide a professional, responsive and high quality maintenance and improvement service for customers. To lead on the development and implementation of service delivery improvements to ensure continuous improvement and value for money is achieved. To represent the Authority in a professional manner at all times.
• Statutory Obligations: Ensure the Hull City Council fulfils its Statutory Obligations in relation to the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023, Consumer Standards Codes of Practice, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, Fire Safety Act 2021, the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005, Social Housing Regulation Act 2023, and maintain an expert knowledge of housing legislation, government advice and guidance, and national best practice so as to verify compliance with Council, statutory and best value requirements.
• Manage, lead, guide and advise a team of professional technical staff to enable high quality work to be consistently produced. Regularly monitor, audit and review work undertaken to verify compliance with policies, procedures and service delivery plans. Produce, deliver and implement training programmes for Surveyors and contribute to the development of computer systems in order to maintain a high quality surveying service through knowledgeable professional staff.
• Prepare and present reports to Area Committees, other members and public meetings.
• Research and implement new developments in legislation, building construction, energy efficiency, best practice and equipment to remain responsive in providing a cost-effective service and obtain value for money from contractors undertaking works to council housing stock.
• Create and co-ordinate the production of contract documentation, contract specifications and related reports to verify that all contracts comply with council procurement strategies and relevant legislation.
• Maintain an expert knowledge of housing legislation, government advice and guidance and national best practice so as to verify compliance with Council, statutory and best value requirements.
• Produce and control budget expenditure profiles and co-ordinate workloads to monitor the efficient management of the housing capital and revenue budgets.

Benefits of Working of Hull City Council:

• A competitive salary
• An excellent pension through the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
• Initially 23 days annual leave depending on length of service. You will also get eight public holidays per year, and three additional days off, one in May/August and one during the Christmas/New year period
• Career development and learning experiences from a range of training courses and learning methods
• Supportive and forward-thinking culture
• Great career development opportunities

We are committed to increasing the diversity, equality, and inclusion within our workforce to represent the people we serve and build an environment in which everyone can feel like they belong. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.

We adopt a ‘name blind’ approach to shortlisting. Recruiting managers will not have access to personal information, including your name and contact details, until a shortlisting decision has been made. Equality monitoring information is not accessible by recruiting managers at any stage.

The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.

Online searches, including social media, may be carried out as part of the recruitment process.