Senior Housing & Income Officer

Look Ahead Care and Support; London; On-site; GBP 38,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a compassionate and resilient team as a Senior Housing & Income Officer, where you will play a vital role in managing income collection and ensuring housing compliance. This position offers a unique opportunity to lead a dedicated team, driving performance and making a significant impact in the community. With a focus on excellence and innovation, you will help transform lives by supporting individuals in need. Enjoy a supportive work environment with ample opportunities for professional growth, including 25 days of annual leave, pension schemes, and career progression. If you are passionate about making a difference, this role is for you.

Benefits

25 days Annual Leave

Pension Schemes

Staff Discounts

Healthcare

Career Progression

Qualifications

• Experience in delivering housing management services and possession proceedings.
• Strong understanding of housing law and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Manage income collection and oversee Housing Officers' performance.
• Ensure compliance with housing policies and procedures.

Skills

Housing Management

Leadership

Communication Skills

Data Analysis

Customer Service

Education

5 GCSEs or equivalent (level C or above)

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Housing Management Systems

Job description

The job requirements are detailed below. Where applicable the skills, qualifications and memberships required for this job have also been included.

Job details

Job reference REQ006012 Date posted 21/01/2025 Application closing date 21/02/2025 Location Islington Salary £38,000.00 per annum Package 25 days Annual Leave, pension schemes, staff discounts, healthcare and career progression Contractual hours 35 Basis Full time Job category/type Fixed Term Contract, Full Time

Senior Housing & Income Officer

We’re looking for a kind, compassionate and resilient Senior Income & Housing Officer to join our Landlord Services team at our Head Office in Islington.

£38,000.00 per annum, working 35 hours per week. Benefits include 25 days Annual Leave, pension schemes, staff discounts, healthcare and career progression.

This is a fixed term contract until November 2025.

Want to feel like you’re making a difference? You’ll feel at home here.

Making you feel at home here means helping you thrive in every way. That’s why we offer a wide range of benefits, award-winning Learning & Development and a culture that welcomes all. These aren’t token gestures - we’ve thought long and hard about how best to support our team. After all, our people are doing something amazing: helping to transform lives every day.

Each year, Look Ahead collects c£21m of rent and service charge from the 3,000 units of property that we own and manage. This amount represents roughly a third of Look Ahead’s annual income and therefore it is essential for us to maximise our income collection.

The Senior Housing Officer will be based at Look Ahead’s head office in Islington but there will be regular travel across London and the south east. The Landlord Services team provides housing management across all of Look Ahead’s owned and managed properties.

The main focus of the Senior Housing Officer’s role is income collection, managing other breaches of tenancy such as anti-social behaviour, working with compliance colleagues to follow up on fire risk assessment actions required, gas capping cases and any access issues for gas and electrical checks. You will be responsible for monitoring an ongoing programme of estate inspections, living standard checks and tenancy audits. You will also ensure that empty void properties are re-let within tight time frames and data systems kept up to date. Focusing on Look Ahead’s unsupported properties- you will line manage 3 Housing Officers- 2 of which are based on site in our services in Southwark and Barking and Dagenham. You will also line manage 1 Estates Officer. You will act as the lead liaison manager between Look Ahead and the external Tenancy Sustainment Team which provides support to some of our customers.

You will be expected to meet challenging key performance indicators and promote good practice within the team. You will have a strong understanding of housing law and excellent communication skills.

Reporting to the Income Manager, the Senior Housing Officer will be required to analyse data and produce basic reports to evaluate the organisation’s income collection and voids performance.

What you’ll do:

Income Collection

• Manage the performance and co-ordination of the Housing Officers, setting and monitoring their performance via KPIs.
• Lead the team of Housing Officers to reduce the overall level of current and former tenant arrears within organisational targets.
• Responsible for dealing with escalated cases of arrears for individuals and complicated cases.
• Monitor and enforce compliance with Look Ahead’s Income Collection policy and procedure, specifically with Income Officers and Operation colleagues.
• Responsible for championing and promoting the use of Income Collection policy and procedure with contract managers, providing guidance and support where required.
• Ensure that all housing management systems are kept updated regarding income-related and customer profiling matters and that customer files are being maintained appropriately.
• Co-ordinate and design any training related to housing management systems, the Income Collection Procedure and income maximisation.
• Responsible for coordinating the collation of FTA’s for referral to write offs or debt collection agencies.
• Provide Income Manager with reports on income collection levels at a service level and for escalated customer cases, with specific analysis on the reasons behind any increases or any other reports as required.
• Review and approve legal action in relation to rent arrears and authorising permission requests from Income Officers for Landlords.
• Monitor and authorise the use of solicitors for income-related legal action, keeping within budget and aiming to reduce legal fees.
• Work with the customer service team to ensure that any complaints related to service charges or customer’s rent accounts are resolved in line with the organisation’s feedback and complaints procedure.
• Delivery of annual rent increases within required timeframes, including ensuring legal obligations to notify customers are met, relevant departments such as HB and DWP are notified and new payments implemented, Direct Debit payments are amended and informing Operations staff of new charges.
• Assist Income Manager with developing policies and procedures in line with organisational and regulatory changes.
• Attend occasional residents meetings.
• Carry out management duties for direct reports including one to ones, staff appraisals/personal development plans, identify training needs, performance management and monitoring absence.

Void Management

• Ensure that housing officers complete void inspections in line with tight time frameworks and that void actions on the housing management system are updated.
• Ensure that referrals are requested from our partner agencies and that voids are let within timescales.
• Regular liaison with the voids team to ensure that any issues potentially delaying re-let times such as repairs work, are dealt with effectively.
• Produce reports for senior managers on the progress of void re-lets.

Anti-Social Behaviour and other breaches of tenancy

• Ensure that housing officers take prompt action for anti-social behaviour and other breaches of tenancy in line with Look Ahead’s policies and procedures.
• Support staff with advice in line with housing law and attend court for some cases.
• Disseminate best practice and ensure that cases are managed proactively and effectively involving external agencies where appropriate for example the police and social services.

Compliance

• Attend weekly escalation meetings with the compliance team focusing on gas checks, electrical checks and fire risk assessment actions.
• Ensure the Estates Officer is following up on access issues and completing fire risk assessment actions.
• Ensure gas capped risk assessments are completed and work with compliance colleagues to reduce the number of gas capped customers.
• Ensure that annual fire door checks and monthly communal fire door checks are completed and recorded.
• Lead on legal action such as injunctions with our solicitors if there are repeated access issues.
• Ensure our on-site housing officers keep adequate records of fire drills and flat checks.

Estate management and customer welfare

• Ensure that there is an ongoing programme of tenancy audits, estate inspections and living standards checks in our unsupported units.
• Act as the lead liaison person between Look Ahead and the tenancy sustainment team- ensuring that there are regular meetings and a case management approach for complex cases.
• Ensure that Housing Officers report safeguarding cases and incidents on Look Ahead’s systems and that appropriate action is taken.
• Any other duties as reasonably can be expected of the post holder.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the duties and responsibilities that may be required from time to time and is subject to change in accordance with the needs of Look Ahead.

About you:

• Well organised and highly motivated to ensure delivery to strict deadlines and standards.
• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills to influence and build credibility internally and externally.
• Professional manner and approach in all areas of delivery.
• Self-starter, forward thinking and results focused.

What you’ll bring:

• Experience of delivering housing management services including possession proceedings in the county court.
• A proven track record of managing the delivery of outstanding customer-focused services.
• Practical experience of line managing, leading, motivating and mentoring staff.
• Experience of working with other stakeholders to deliver demonstrable business outcomes.
• Good standard of overall education, such as 5 GCSEs or equivalent (level C or above) including English and Maths.
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of housing legislation, regulation and best practice.
• An up-to-date and continually developing housing knowledge inclusive of national, regional, local agendas and operational best practice.
• Specific knowledge to deliver income recovery and sustainment services in accordance with relevant legislation.
• Experience of managing anti-social behaviour cases and liaison with relevant external agencies.
• Knowledge and comprehensive understanding of welfare benefits including housing benefit and universal credit housing costs.
• Ability to understand, interpret and fully apply processes and policy; including the application of sound judgement and discretion where required.
• Strong IT skills to maintain and develop the housing management systems.
• Microsoft confident to use a variety of software packages including excel spreadsheets and presentation packages.

About us:

Look Ahead is a leading, not-for-profit care and support provider in London and the South East. Our vision is to build better lives through social care and housing in local communities. As an organisation we deliver over 120 services, providing support to around 6000 customers each year. Our mission is to co-design and deliver services that offer innovative social care solutions and support people to thrive. We work across mental health, homelessness, young people and learning disabilities so there are plenty of opportunities to grow and progress your career with us.

We have a strong social purpose and we live and work by our values:

• We focus on Excellence and innovation.
• We are Caring and Compassionate.
• We are Inclusive and Trusted.
• We work in Partnership and are One-Team.

Look Ahead is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk, and expects all employees, workers and volunteers to share this commitment.

If your application for this role is unsuccessful, but we feel that you would be suitable for another role, we may contact you to discuss alternative opportunities. If this occurs you would not need to submit another application for the alternative role.

We reserve the right to close this advert early if we are able to appoint to the vacancy before the advertised closed date.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion at work and are accredited with Silver in the Inclusive Employers Standard 2021. We are a proud member of the Employers Domestic Abuse Covenant and encourage applications from a diverse range of applicants of all backgrounds.

You can write to us or visit our Head Office at
Look Ahead, 439 Caledonian Road, London N79BG .

A charitable housing association registered under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014: No.21004R. Registered with the Homes and Communities Agency NoLH0013. Look Ahead Care and Support has a trading subsidiary, Look Ahead Developments Ltd (LADL) which undertakes design and build, and major refurbishment and renovation contracts on its behalf. LADL is registered with Companies House.