Job Details
| Workstyle:
Flexible – combination of office based and working from home. Umbrella rate: £31 per hour Deadline – 29th Dec 2025 |
| This post requires a DBS check at the appropriate level (basic) |
| This is a safety critical post and will be subject to the council’s drug and alcohol policy |
| This post is subject to the council’s declaration of interest procedure |
| This post is designated as politically restricted |
Our mission
We are determined to make Islington more equal. To create a place where everyone, whatever their background, has the opportunity to reach their potential and enjoy a good quality of life. We also have an ambitious goal – to be the best council in the country – with every employee clear about the part they play and inspired, focused and supported to give their very best. We want to build an organisation where employees feel valued, inspired and empowered to help us achieve our goals and provide the best services possible to our residents.
Our values and behaviours
‘Be Islington’ is about setting a clear challenge about what it means to be an Islington employee and sets the standard for every new recruit. We ask our employees to ‘Be Islington’ – playing their part in working together for a more equal borough and to always be collaborative, be ambitious, be resourceful, and be empowering (‘CARE’).
Our commitment to challenging inequality
We are committed to tackling inequality, racism and injustice and creating a more equal borough for all. In order to do this, we need to set the example by being a fair employer and creating a workplace environment which is free from discrimination, racism and inequality. Our approach needs to be proactive, consistently learning to create a more equal workplace and foster a culture which empowers all staff to challenge inequality. Equality is at the heart of what we do. We want to celebrate and embrace our differences by:
- Ensuring our workforce is representative of the people we work on behalf of, our residents
- Creating equitable working environments and diverse teams
- Understanding our residents in order to design and deliver services that help tackle inequality and improve life chances for our residents
- Getting to know people and their differences
- Interpreting issues and concerns from a cultural perspective and address situations or problems from the points-of-view of multiple cultures.
Overview of the role
Islington’s Housing Needs Service seeks to place residents at the heart of everything we do and, striving to treat every resident as if we are providing a service to an important member of our family. We want to ensure that Islington’s Housing Needs service is seen as the best service in the country. Every person, throughout our teams, has a vital role to play in delivering this vision.
Housing Needs is a frontline service supporting vulnerable customers who will present with a range of complexities including health and social care needs. We want every person in our Service to adopt a trauma informed approach that places the customer at the heart of service delivery and as part of this to promote the spirt of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
Key responsibilities
- To provide a temporary accommodation service for households whom the council has a statutory homelessness responsibility for. These include both families with children and single people.
- To provide a co-ordinated end to end support service to homeless customers, from the point they are placed in temporary accommodation, to when they move on to permanent housing.
Temporary accommodation service
- To manage a case load of households in temporary accommodation, whose homeless application is either being investigated or has been accepted by the council.
- To contact new occupants within two weeks of moving in, be assured that the customer has settled into their temporary accommodation and set up all appropriate benefits to ensure payment of their rent.
- To carry out regular property visits in order to monitor the quality of accommodation, check compliance with Health and Safety standards, and confirm occupancy.
- To ensure the customer is proactively contacted on a regular basis whilst they reside in temporary accommodation and to keep accurate records of all interactions.
- To monitor the performance of managing agents to ensure that minimum property standards are maintained and ensure corrective action is taken where necessary.
- To keep up to date voids information, and liaise with allocations officers and accommodation providers to ensure social housing voids are filled within set timescales and to complete all necessary admin processes in respect of new placements into temporary accommodation.
- To make all necessary arrangements to transfer customers to alternative temporary accommodation, conducting suitability assessments (before any offers of housing) and where appropriate, including interviewing and signing up customers.
- To maximise rental income for the council through:
- Supporting customers to establish housing benefit claims
- Referring customers to appropriate specialist advice and support services in order to maximise their income and manage their debts
- Supporting customers apply for Discretionary Housing Payments
- To keep up to date records of customers, including adding / deleting household members on their homeless applications. To ensure their details are live on the relevant council databases.
- To identify and refer cases to the Housing Investigations teams where fraud is suspected.
- To monitor homeless applicants in temporary accommodation and take appropriate action to respond to changes in their circumstances, breaches of occupancy agreement, etc, including issuing warnings, writing Discharge of Duty letters, where appropriate and updating homelessness applications.
- To ensure medical reviews and appeals are forwarded to the appropriate officers, followed up and actioned.
- To ensure customers the council has accepted a housing duty for are correctly pointed in line with the council’s allocations scheme for permanent housing.
- To identify customers eligible for moving to permanent accommodation, ensuring all their details are up to date, and their specific housing requirements assessed and documented.
- To enable customers to bid for permanent accommodation, by ensuring they are given access to the council’s choice based bidding system.
- Where customers are unable to secure permanent housing through the bidding process, to make them ‘direct’ offers under the Supported Choice scheme.
- To accompany customers to property viewings as appropriate.
- To assist customers to apply for grants to purchase furniture and white goods for their new home.
- To liaise closely with the council’s Housing Options and Homes and Communities services in order to provide a seamless rehousing service to customers.
- To work as a team covering duties during absences, as directed by the team manager, answering phones for absent colleagues and receiving callers not associated with the individual patch allocated.
- To work with a wide range of internal and external agencies, including Registered Social landlords, Temporary Accommodation providers and the private and voluntary sectors.
- To work in accordance with joint protocols with Childrens and Adults Social services for effective liaison, for discharging statutory joint obligations and duties, and to ensure a seamless service for vulnerable customers.
- To ensure responsibilities with regard to the safeguarding of adults at risk and children are met.
- To meet the support needs of vulnerable customers in temporary accommodation by referring to the appropriate floating support services, targeting those who have no support network.
- To respond to queries, complaints and correspondence from customers and their representatives, MPs, solicitors etc within target timescales and with due consideration to the quality of response provided.
General
- To provide data as required to enable robust and detailed performance monitoring of the service to be undertaken.
- To work on own initiative and manage time and workload effectively, whilst also working as part of a team in a positive, participative and contributory manner.
- To use or assist others to use Information Technology systems to carry out duties in the most efficient and effective manner.
- To undertake training and constructively take part in meetings, supervision, seminars and other events designed to improve communication and assist with the effective development of the post and post holder.
- Ensure that duties are undertaken with due regard and compliance with the general Data Protection Regulation and other legislation.
| Experience | |
| Experience of working in a housing related area, eg homelessness, social housing, temporary accommodation, housing advice, allocations | A |
| Experience of dealing with the public, including those who are vulnerable, and/or present with potentially complex issues and challenging behaviour | A |
| Skills | |
| Knowledge of relevant legislation relating to homelessness, housing allocation and temporary accommodation with particular reference to the Housing Act 1996, as amended 2002, and Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 | A |
| Ability to monitor and manage a client caseload | A/I |
| Understanding of the issues relating to single vulnerable homeless people and families | A/I |
| Knowledge and understanding of welfare benefits and the impacts of welfare reform | A/I |
| Ability to use computer software packages such as word, excel, outlook, as well as bespoke client databases and electronic document management systems | A/T |
| Excellent literacy and numeracy skills | A/T |
| Ability to share information clearly, concisely and accurately, in ways that ensures common understanding | A/I |
| Ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, with a wide range of audiences including the public, members, senior officers and external organisations | A/I |
| Ability to demonstrate flexibility in own role in order to help meet team requirements | A/I |
| Working knowledge of health and safety issues relating to the provision of temporary housing for vulnerable households | A |
If you think this job role is for you, please send your CV to rebeccabentum@carringtonblakerecruitment.com
