Assistant Service Manager - Housing Register

London Borough of Hounslow; Greater London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

London Borough of Hounslow is seeking an Assistant Service Manager for the Housing Register. You will provide frontline leadership to a team of 4–8 frontline officers, ensuring a modern, responsive, and person-centred housing service for vulnerable residents across the Borough.

You will lead on Part VI reviews, manage casework, and ensure compliance with statutory duties under Part VI of the Housing Act 1996. A Level 4 housing management qualification is required.

Qualifications

• Experience leading multi-disciplinary housing teams and staff.
• Strong knowledge of Part VI of the Housing Act 1996 and related guidance.
• Experience handling complex homeless cases with vulnerable client groups.
• Ability to manage staff in high-volume, fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Assess housing applications to join the housing register in line with the Allocation Scheme.
• Maintain accurate records and use data to support quality assurance.
• Respond to Member enquiries, LGSCO investigations, FOI requests and SARs; brief senior management.
• Lead and develop a team of Housing Register officers.
• Oversee day-to-day Part VI reviews and issue decisions accordingly.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Integrity

Analytical thinking

Problem-solving

Adaptability

Education

Level 4 housing management

Job description

This is an exciting opportunity to join our Homelessness, Independence and Preventative Services which adopts a preventative approach across the housing, health and social care agendas. You must be professional, energetic and enthusiastic as we are interested in what you can bring to help us improve and develop our services to support some of our most vulnerable residents. As an Assistant Service Manager within the Housing Register team, you play a critical frontline leadership role in delivering a modern, responsive, and person-centred housing service to some of our most vulnerable individuals and families across the Borough. About The Team You\'ll Be Working In This is an exciting and busy role that is at the centre of the Councils response to homelessness and housing need. You are responsible for the effective line management and operational oversight of a team of 4-8 frontline officers, ensuring high-quality delivery of services relating to housing applications, assessments, advice, resettlement, homelessness prevention, and allocations. You take a lead role in the day-to-day management of the Housing Register and the implementation of the Council's Allocations Policy, ensuring statutory duties under Part VI of the Housing Act 1996 are fulfilled. Your team identifies households at risk of homelessness and those whose independence may be compromised by inadequate or insecure housing. The focus of your role will be:

• The assessment of housing applications from residents wishing to join the housing register in line with the Council's Allocation Scheme
• Maintaining accurate records, using data, to implement and measure quality assurance initiatives.
• Responding to Member enquiries, Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) investigations, complaints, freedom of information requests, subject access requests. Providing briefings to senior management.
• Expert knowledge of Part VI of the Housing Act 1996 and associated statutory guidance and case law.
• Leading and developing a team of Housing Register officers.
• Lead on the day-to-day management of all Part VI reviews. You will be responsible for carrying out and/or monitoring investigations that are required to make and issue decisions on Part VI reviews.

The post holder is responsible for ensuring a casework-based approach is adopted throughout the team, and that each case is progressed efficiently and in line with relevant legislation, policies, and guidance. To operate effectively in a highly changeable and demanding working environment with multiple competing priorities, ensuring timely and relevant interventions are carried out to prevent escalation of need, decisions are made to fulfil statutory requirements and legal challenges are responded to.

You have extensive knowledge and experience of the Part VI of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended) working with vulnerable people, and experience of leading multi-disciplinary housing teams and work involving complex needs and diverse client groups.

• 1. You have a strong ability to lead, motivate, manage and develop staff in a challenging, high volume, fast paced working environment, supporting staff to deal effectively with the demands of frontline work while delivering key service objectives.
• 2. You are an expert communicator who engages effectively with a broad range of people, including applicants, colleagues, and elected members, to motivate, influence, negotiate and persuade and achieve multi-disciplinary outcomes to meet wide ranging needs.
• 3. You act with integrity, take personal responsibility and handle stress effectively, being a confident decision maker while motivating others to achieve successful corporate preventative outcomes, using proactive and creative solutions.
• 4. You work flexibly and independently, adapting to changing needs and proactively keep the team up to date with legislation, policy and guidance to ensure legally compliant recommendations and decisions.
• 5. You have excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, a comprehensive understanding of issues faced by vulnerable people and you work collaboratively with others to meet a range of needs while leading and managing a team achieve targets and objectives and make the team the very best it can be.
• 6. Must hold a relevant Level 4 qualification in housing management regulated by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) or be willing to work towards such a qualification.

If the points above resonate with you, we would like to hear from you.

• Are you passionate about customer services?
• Are you an experienced homelessness professional?
• Are you looking to working in a forward thinking and progressive housing department?

About us at Hounslow

We\'d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be. We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we\'ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London\'s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in "Harness the Mix". It\'s about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer. We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.