Estate Manager (Temporary Accommodation)

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Job Description

Estate Manager (Temporary Accommodation)

Permanent

Salary: Band 9 - £36,647 - £40,220 p.a.

37 hours per week

The Service:

Portsmouth City Council's Housing Needs, Advice & Support Service works directly with customers to help deal with housing issues and prevent homelessness in the city. We are a busy front-line service dealing directly with customers, many of whom are vulnerable and/or facing homelessness. The service assesses and advises customers on the Housing Needs, Advice & Support available to them, provide support services to vulnerable people and rough sleepers, provide temporary accommodation and link with providers to help people move into more permanent accommodation.

The Accommodation Team provide a vital link into accommodation for those that approach the council. This includes temporary accommodation for the homeless and links to external housing providers, including housing associations and private sector landlords.

What is the role?

You will be responsible for leading and developing a team of officers and to equip them to deliver effective responses to a range of issues relating to households in temporary accommodation.

Primarily, you will lead and support the Accommodation Team in:

• Arranging emergency housing for homeless households with a variety of temporary accommodation providers, ensuring the best use of available resources and helping monitor costs.
• Engagement with private landlords and letting companies, who the council work with to provide properties for homeless households, to ensure the smooth running of the service.
• Providing administrative support to Housing Needs, Advice & Support, including raising purchase orders, paying invoices, liaising with suppliers and support services, and updating systems.
• Working with stakeholders to ensure the quick turnaround of vacant properties so they are available, when needed, to meet the Council's statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation to homeless households.
• Managing rental income from temporary accommodation, ensuring officers are equipped to engage and enable our customers to claim relevant benefits and sustain their rent payments.

In this role, you will be expected to continually develop the skill set of the officers who report to you, so they become more effective in their role thus leading to an improvement in service to our customers. You will do this by modelling and reinforcing correct behaviours, addressing training needs or skills gaps.

You will also be expected to assist the Housing Accommodation & Allocations Manager to use measures to understand, ensure and improve the effective delivery of the service and associated budgets, always in accordance with current homelessness legislation.

Who is the person?

You need to:

• Have current experience of working in a challenging front line service as you will be supporting officers in dealing with customers who are homeless and are faced with a range of social issues.
• Knowledge of homeless legislation, landlord and tenant law and relevant statutory powers would be an advantage.
• Have the required skills and knowledge to lead a team of officers, offering support and advice to make them more effective in their role.
• Be emotionally resilient and able to make decisions under pressure, in a structured and transparent way to resolve complex issues from a customer perspective using initiative, judgement and an understanding of the law.
• Be reactive to problems, working on initiative and encouraging others to, prioritising conflicting and often complex demands.
• Possess an understanding of safeguarding, equality and diversity, GDPR and Freedom of Information legislation.
• Be able to identify, and act on, the barriers that prevent effective service delivery to continuously improve performance.
• Have a working knowledge of Housing Benefit.
• Be able to communicate effectively with customers from various backgrounds and with differing needs, as well as with senior professionals including MPs and local ward Councillors.
• Demonstrate that you have the appropriate skills needed to be able to effectively manage staffing issues as they arise, such as sickness absence, disciplinary, general welfare and on-going recruitment.
• Be competent using a variety of IT systems such as Excel and other office applications.
• Be flexible as you may be required to work from various locations and outside of normal working hours.
• Having a current driving licence and daily use of a vehicle would be an advantage.

If you have any questions or would like an informal chat about the role please contact Daniel Lake on daniel.lake@portsmouthcc.gov.uk or 02392 841149.

Closing date: 11th September 2024 at 17:00

Assessments/interviews: 18th - 20th September 2024

When completing the application form, please thoroughly tailor your application to the 'Who is the Person' points with the use of examples from your experience and attach this as a cover letter in the Supporting Documents section. This is really important or you are likely not to be shortlisted. Please click HERE for the full job profile!

We are a disability confident employer - committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible and welcome applications from all areas of society.

We really appreciate our employees and fully realise they are essential to our success and look to offer an inclusive, supportive working environment where employees can reach their potentials with a healthy work life balance, offering the following rewards:

• A generous pension scheme
• Up to 31 days annual leave per year pro rata + bank holidays
• A range of retail discounts via our reward portal offering discounts at retailers including IKEA, Currys, Tesco
• Free Access to Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and wellbeing support
• Access to a wide range of training and development opportunities including apprenticeships
• Potential to purchase additional annual leave
• Business travel support and initiatives, including bike loans

Click HERE to see all the benefits of working with us!

Should you require any support in completing the application form please contact recruit@portsmouthcc.gov.uk