Temporary Accommodation Team Manager – AR

Carrington Blake Recruitment; Kingston upon Thames; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A local council is seeking a Temporary Accommodation Team Manager to enhance operational delivery of services for the homeless. The role demands excellent leadership, experience in public housing, and strong analytical skills. The successful candidate will lead a team in a dynamic environment, ensuring compliance with statutory obligations and partnership engagement. This position offers an opportunity to shape the future of temporary accommodation while focusing on community needs.

Benefits

Flexible work-life balance

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience managing a busy, frontline public housing service.
• Experience of public sector housing management or similar.
• Knowledge of private leasing schemes and the needs of homeless households.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Temporary Accommodation team, ensuring high performance.
• Manage operational delivery of temporary accommodation services.
• Develop service improvements alongside team and stakeholder input.

Skills

Leadership skills

Analytical skills

Problem-solving ability

Customer service focus

Budget management

Education

Knowledge of housing management law

Understanding of health and safety obligations

Job description

ROYAL BOROUGH OF KINGSTON UPON THAMES – ROLE PROFILE

Temporary Accommodation Team Manager

Role purpose

The Council is focused on delivering the best possible outcomes for its communities. To do this the Council needs managers who thrive in a networked organisation and who can provide strong operational leadership.

Key roles and responsibilities

The role will:

• Lead, develop and deliver the management of hostels and the operational delivery of temporary accommodation within accommodation secured under spot-purchase, leased or other forms of procurement offering dispersed properties for statutorily homeless and other clients in accordance with relevant legislation, policies and procedures.
• Lead and manage the Temporary Accommodation Team, ensuring properties meet the required health & safety standards, that repairing obligations are met, minimising voids and rent loss and managing relationships with homeless households and housing provider landlords and their agents.
• Support the Accommodation Services Lead by contributing to the overall development of the temporary accommodation service.

The role reports directly to the Accommodation Services Lead and is directly responsible for a team of Temporary Accommodation Officers. The role will also manage the emergency out of hours rota and occasionally be available for cover if required. Enhancements will be paid in accordance with policy.

Important Internal Relationships

• Place Directorate Management Team
• Service Heads
• Legal Services
• Elected Members and Councillors
• Team Colleagues (Homelessness, hostels, resettlements, et al)

Important External Relationships

• Service users (and their representatives)
• Private Landlords
• Temporary accommodation providers
• All relevant partner organisations for whom and with whom the Council does business (strategic partnerships, local authorities, registered providers, contractors, developers, private owners, et al)
• Government/regulatory bodies (Housing Regulator, GLA, et al)

Key activities

Leadership

• Provides inspirational and constructive leadership to the Temporary Accommodation team to ensure high performance within a networked operating model
• Facilitates change and innovation, building a team culture that encourages innovative, smart and collaborative working
• Listens to, and works with colleagues to develop team goals in line with corporate strategy, and influences and motivates others to achieve this

Commissioning and Performance Management

• Commissions services and activities to secure the best outcomes for service users and deliver optimum value for money, in line with the Council’s commissioning and contract management frameworks
• Translates internal and external intelligence in order to continually adapt and improve the services in line with demand
• Manages the performance of the team, working with colleagues to define outcomes, set targets and monitor performance, within a culture of continual improvement
• Develops operational plans to ensure that the resources within the teams are used to best effect and impact
• Ensures that the best use is made of financial resources and achieves balanced budgets and income and savings targets, as required.

Customers and Partners

• Builds strong working partnerships across the public, private and voluntary sectors to enable the service to be delivered in an outcome‑focused and efficient way
• Promotes community cohesion and Kingston’s commitment to valuing diversity, ensuring the development and implementation of effective social inclusion

Digital/New Ways of Working

• Continually looks for ways to improve and modernise our service to customers, including developing and implementing digital/automated processes and eliminating paper wherever possible.
• Champions the use of new technologies, particularly Google, to enable modern working practices to thrive.

Delivery

• Responsible for the day to day operation of the team, providing support and guidance to staff on all casework, including monitoring of performance. Effectively manages casework allocation and standards.
• Provides detailed advice to customers other teams and partners on Temporary Accommodation Schemes and support on complex , escalated issues
• Deals with and provides responses for complex complaints
• Acts as database system champion/’super user’ for the team’s IT system/s and supports team members to fully utilise IT systems
• Leads proactively on the temporary accommodation management strategy for all schemes.
• Liaises with communities and partners to engage socially excluded and disadvantaged groups
• Ensures that voids and rent loss are minimised, performance targets and service standards are met and effective letting, renewal & hand‑back arrangements
• Applies effective budget management techniques to achieve maximum value for money, including generating additional funding and income and preventing overspend
• Manage referrals into the schemes and effective placement of households and management of landlord relationships
• Provides reports on complex issues, data and cases and contributes to joint protocols
• Contributes to joint reviews of accommodation services and/or temporary accommodation options, services for homeless and vulnerable people, ensuring the implementation of initiatives to optimise access to appropriate temporary accommodation and maximise private sector options, minimise homelessness amongst vulnerable households and maximise the effective use of accommodation
• Provides advice on case law statute and policy to all the team
• Monitors performance and coaches staff to enhance performance of service including overseeing all Learning & Development needs
• Implements changes to legislation, policies , processes and procedures
• Prepares reviews and/or planning of protocols, services and provision of temporary accommodation including the development of new or expanded services in conjunction with Adult Social Care/Health/Children’s Service (AfC)/voluntary sector partners
• Leads on joint reviews relating to accommodation services, temporary accommodation, homelessness and vulnerable people
• Actively identifies commissioning opportunities
• Deputises for the Lead Officer Accommodation Services

Equality and Diversity

• Embeds equity, equality, fairness and diversity into all aspects of team management and service delivery

Corporate responsibilities

• GDPR
• Election duties
• Emergency planning and business continuity
• Engagement & Collaboration
• Health and Safety
• Safeguarding – protection of vulnerable adults and children
• Volunteering/social impact
• Complaints handling and investigation

NB. The requirements of this post could include attending meetings and other events outside normal hours as expected with a post of this nature and the postholder will need to manage their work life balance flexibly to meet the needs of the role.

The person

In order to successfully deliver the responsibilities of the role, you will need to:

• Have strong leadership skills, modelling a performance culture and constructively building achievement, confidence and skills in others
• Question and challenge conventional thinking, with a continual eye on the bigger picture in terms of the corporate context and external environment
• Role model agility and adaptability in mindset and ways of working
• Work successfully with key stakeholders including Members, residents, businesses, communities, partner organisations and other public services
• Demonstrate commitment to own personal and professional development to meet the changing demands of the role
• Demonstrate a high level of innovation and creativity.
• Experience of leading service transformation
• Extensive experience of setting targets, monitoring performance, and taking remedial action to achieve targets in a pressurised homelessness setting

Our leadership competencies

Leadership

• Ability to demonstrate successful leadership and build a strong, capable and highly motivated team

Partnering for Excellence

• Ability to apply commercial judgement to make decisions that will deliver cost efficient and effective results for Kingston Council and the Kingston community

Communication and Influencing

• An ability to understand and respond to the evolving economic and social environment within which Kingston Council operates
• Seeks, listens to and responds to the views and ideas of staff and customers
• Keeps staff informed of information that affects them

Putting the Customer First

• Demonstrate a strong commitment to service excellence, customer care and continuous improvement
• Identify and understand the needs of both internal and external customers by providing excellent customer service in all areas of Council business

Being the Best

• Support performance improvement by challenging the status quo and providing enough scope for staff to experiment with new or innovative solutions

Required Personal Attributes

• Excellent analytical, numerical, commercial, negotiation, communication and presentation skills
• Ability to prioritise, work under pressure and goal oriented
• Highly organised and methodical with excellent attention to detail
• Strong leadership to ensure robust governance and compliance
• Ability to multitask and manage tight deadlines

Our Values

Becoming an enabling council is a key principle that runs through our organisational development and is embedded in everything we do. Underpinning these priorities are the following values:

• Supportive of trying new ideas, with the courage to change direction.
• Transparent and connected in all that we think, say and do.
• Appreciative of each other, recognising and celebrating success.
• Respectful of difference and valuing diversity.

Temporary Accommodation Team Manager – Career Progression Scheme

The post has been graded H/I to allow for:

• The appointment of less qualified and/or experienced individuals within a scale designed to allow staff to develop within the field
• Maintaining motivation and aiding staff retention
• Enabling staff to gain a broad range of experience
• Allowing for flexibility in resource planning
• Annual increments awarded based upon experience gained and the outcome of the annual appraisal.

Criteria to be met before progressing to Grade I

• Consistently achieves performance objectives
• Displays a continued commitment to own personal development and learning including completing a range of training and development opportunities.
• Delivers a high standard of service to internal and external customers and colleagues
• Demonstrates a positive attitude to work
• Contributes to the overall development of the service by
• Monitoring performance and coaching staff to enhance performance of service including overseeing all Learning & Development needs
• Implementing changes to legislation, policies , processes and procedures
• Managing budgetary information
• Preparing reviews and/or planning of protocols, services and provision of advice & information including the development of new or expanded services
• Leading on all initiatives to improve the service
• Actively identifying commissioning opportunities
• Deputising for the Accommodation Services Lead

Person Specification

Knowledge, including educational qualifications

E/D How assessed (Application/Interview/

Test Knowledge of housing management law, repairing and health and safety obligations management of arrears and voids relating to temporary accommodation and E A/I

Knowledge of private leasing schemes, Hostels and Emergency Accomodation and the needs of homeless households E A/I

Experience

• Experience of managing a busy, frontline public housing service or similar and/or significant technical experience E A/I
• Experience of public sector housing management to tenants and/or homeless households or similar E A/I
• Experience of partnership working and influencing and negotiating to achieve successful outcomes D A/I

Skills & Abilities

• Ability to work with others, whilst providing clear leadership, motivating others to achieve excellent performance. E A/I
• Has the ability to understand and assimilate complex information, and communicate effectively to different audiences
• Customer service focused, able to develop productive working relationships with partners E A/I/T
• Ability to think, plan and act with a creative approach to problem solving and delivery in demanding circumstances and with competing priorities to ensure deadlines are met E A/I
• Ability to manage budgets effectively to provide value for money and ensuring financial propriety E A/I/T
• Ability to provide clear leadership, motivating others to achieve excellent performance. Is able to delegate effectively. E A/I
• Ability to manage Health & Safety risks effectively E A/I