Tenancy Sustainment Officer

Organisation
- Dorset Council
- Location
- Dorchester, United Kingdom
- Reference
- 61052584
- Occupational group
- Housing
- Salary details
- £27,852 - £32,020

Job term
- Full Time
- Appointment type
- Fixed Term
- Contact
- Ashleigh Johnston
- Contact telephone
- 01202 228816
- Closing Date
- 09 March 2023 11:00 PM

**Tenancy Sustainment Officer**:
**37 hours per week (flexible working considered)**:
**Fixed term until 29 March 2024**:
**Salary £27,852 - £32,020**:
**Dorchester, combined with home-working**:
**What’s in it for you**:
Are you looking to make a positive impact? Are you able to motivate people to take steps to help themselves? Do you have good negotiating skills together with knowledge across multiple security of tenure?

If so Dorset Council is seeking Tenancy Sustainment Officers to work with our customers to secure accommodation within these sectors and work to keep people in their homes and resolve their housing problems.

**What you can expect to be doing**:
To prevent homelessness by providing a specialist, high-quality personalised tenancy sustainment service that helps customers to meet their housing costs, reduce their debts and outgoings, maximise their income, and manage their tenancy more realistically.

To work proactively and collaboratively with social landlords, private landlords, mortgage lenders, the Council’s Housing Teams, as well as local advice and support providers to ensure that customers receive the help that they need to remain in their homes. This very much plays into the support for hard-pressed households facing the “cost of living crisis”.

To improve the dignity, life opportunities, health and financial wellbeing of vulnerable people who, without intervention, would be at risk of homelessness.

Work with landlords and customers to sustain tenancies, resolve any breaches of the tenancy agreement, assist in the negotiation of rent agreements, and support customers to ensure their rent liability is met and they are compliant with the terms of their tenancy agreement.

Establish the nature, extent, and underlying causes of customers’ financial difficulties and work with them to produce income and expenditure statements, identify and evaluate the options available to them and develop personal action plans for maximising their income, reducing their debts, and outgoings and, if needed, changing their behaviour.

To work proactively with other services and organisations to ensure that the housing and support needs of people are fully assessed and that the appropriate person-centred support plan is put in place to ensure they have the skills to sustain independent living.

Maintain a good understanding of the Council’s policies and procedures for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, and alert Children’s Services and/or Adult Social Care where it is suspected that a child or vulnerable adult might be being abused, neglected or harmed.

**About you**:
Do you have experience working with people in difficult circumstances?

We need applicants who can be sensitive to difficult situations whilst having the ability to negotiate and investigate individual client circumstances. There will be occasions when you may need to provide challenging advice to clients in stressful circumstances.

Are you able to learn new skills?

Our successful applicants will need to demonstrate their ability to learn new skills and legislation and work with clients with complex needs and issues.

Applicants will need to be computer literate, and have a flexible, organised approach to their work to cope with a challenging and varied case load.

Do you develop positive and professional relationships?

We need people who can work in partnership with other agencies to assist and support our clients. The successful applicants will need to maintain and develop professional relationships with colleagues, landlords and a wide range of agencies.

Are you customer focused with good communication skills?

This post is based at County Hall in Dorchester but work will be carried out at various locations across the county. Therefore, this post requires significant travel. You must have a vehicle (or transport we deem suitable) available for use as needed.

**Dorset Council: A great place to work**:
We’re passionate about making Dorset a great place to live, work and visit. Working for us should be no exception.

At Dorset Council we:

- provide more than 450 services to over 300,000 residents
- have ambitious aspirations
- are excited about our future
- care about Dorset and all the people who live here
- know that all roles make a difference and that our employees are key to our success

You will:

- have access to a range of employee benefits
- be part of an organisation that supports each other to grow and succeed
- have access to range of training opportunities which will help with your personal development and career progression

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer.