Tenancy Sustainment Officer

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:
Experience

Experience of working in a housing related area, eg homelessness, social housing, temporary accommodation, housing advice, allocations

Experience of dealing with the public, including those who are vulnerable, and/or present with potentially complex issues and challenging behaviour 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 Ability to monitor and manage a client caseload Understanding of the issues relating to single vulnerable homeless people and families Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer Tenancy Sustainment Officer