Housing Worker

**ROLE PROFILE**

**Housing Worker (Accommodation Management)**

**Area** Plymouth **Team** Resettlement

**Hours **37pw

**Location** Houses (outreach) / Harwell

**Working **Mostly office hours; but some weekend work,
Centre / from home / as required **hours ** early mornings and evenings, inc phone cover

**DBS ** - enhanced check required

**Context**
This role combines work managing houses providing temporary accommodation, in terms of day to day issues, with oversight of Path’s leases, from arranging for us to take on properties to handing them back, with suitable plans in place.

**Role**
This post comprises specific responsibilities and duties, complementing other Resettlement roles:

- Core Resettlement housing management work involves running specific properties, assessing people, moving residents in and out and checking and problem-solving with the properties.
- In addition, this role takes oversight for Path’s owned and leased properties used for temporary accommodation for single people.

**Duties and responsibilities**
Housing management

This post is engaged in managing houses, as part of the role, particularly covering absence within the team.

**1. Moving into resettlement / other temp accommodation**
- Receiving, processing, prioritising and responding to referrals, including building links with relevant services, being clear about the role of the scheme to ensure appropriate referrals at all times
- Assessing potential clients, maintaining a waiting list (as appropriate) and communicating with clients and referrers
- Helping residents move and settle in to properties, carrying out induction for new residents, being clear of rules and expectations, including this being temporary accommodation
- Supporting the setting up Housing Benefit claims and ensuring residents understand rent and top-up

**2. Monitoring and managing houses**
- Conducting at least fortnightly visits to each property, including checks of communal areas, in particular
- Following up re any issues such as damage, wear and tear, repairs etc to ensure that every property is safe and well-maintained
- Working with colleagues to collect and process service charge payments (top-ups) from residents and check and ensure Housing Benefit payments.
- Providing out-of-hours phone cover on rota to respond to maintenance issues, usually from home.

**B. Property agreements**

This post oversees Path’s leases for Resettlement houses and carries out periodic property checks, as below.

**1. Property checks**

The Asset Management role carries out regular, thorough property checks, in addition to those by other housing staff.
- Quarterly property checks to ensure any preventative maintenance is logged and followed up.

(Oversight of maintenance sits with another Housing Worker in the team.)
- Utilities and meter reads - meter readings should be uploaded onto the database
- Carry out annual fire risk assessments

**2. Administration of leases**

Path has leases for properties with various landlords. This role is a contact person for the leases, liaising with landlords about taking on and handing back properties (supported by the Resettlement Manager).

Tasks include:

- Being the HMO license holder on behalf of Path for relevant properties, these being for the

Resettlement service
- Ensuring appropriate handovers of properties back to landlords at the end of leases, inc works to meet lease obligations

**3. Details and documentation**

As part of carrying out those regular checks of each building used by Path, this role works with the Resettlement Admin Worker to ensure all necessary documentation is suitably checked, stored and updated for:

- HMO licenses
- Leases
- Inventories - carrying these out (and follow up work) at the start and end of a lease
- Gas safety
- Electrical safety
- Utility contracts
- IHM breakdowns
- Fire Risk Assessments
- Roof checking - every 5 years
- Other checks and maintenance of the building in terms of structure
- Maintenance tasks including painting inside/outside, clearing gutters, pointing, brickwork etc
- Planning works to address these responsibilities
- Ensuring work is carried out to the right standard and quality

**4. Relevant responsibilities of others**
**The responsibilities of service managers** and teams (not this role) include:

- Internal checks of communal areas - at least weekly in temporary accommodation; accommodation used for tenancies is checked less frequently but at least monthly
- Internal checks of people’s rooms, as appropriate but including at move in and move out
- Noting and reporting any repairs or defects to this role to respond to

Many of these duties will be regular and frequent.

**Other duties**
- Maintain and update house notice boards, including with legally required information
- Providing cover for relevant services (Resettlement and Easylet), including when needed for weekly house checks
- Utilising, developing and maintaining recording and monitoring syste