Housing Officer

**Housing Officer - Income (CPS05)**

**Details**:
Contract Type: Temporary (Maternity Cover)

No of Positions available: 1

Working Hours: 35 hours per week

**Salary**: £37,326 - £40,988, Grade E4-E1

Location: Hybrid working between Inverness/Invergordon/Home

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As we approach our 50th birthday, Albyn Housing Society has a fantastic opportunity for a Housing Officer to join our passionate and enthusiastic Income function in the Customer and Property Services team.

We have many aspirations and ambitions to continually improve our services to our 3,700 customers, spread across 70 rural and urban communities in the Highlands. Our new vision and values will drive our strategic direction by ensuring we:
“Maintain and build quality homes, providing excellent customer service, and giving opportunities for people and communities to flourish.”

We are a people-first organisation, and our values are embodied in our everyday working lives - we want someone to join us who shares and exhibits these values of:
“Being Caring”

Being Adaptable

Being Professional”

As we continue to recover from the Pandemic and face the many and mounting current economic challenges, we are delivering and developing services in new and innovative ways, including participating in a hybrid working model of ‘Hub, Home and Roam”.
- ‘Hub’ means you can still see colleagues face-to-face.
- ‘Home’ is about how we have shown we can be productive and efficient when working remotely.
- ‘Roam’ is about offering community-based service delivery, meeting customers, and visiting them in their homes or local communities.

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**About the Role**

We have an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic, well organised, and caring individual to join Albyn Housing Society in the Income function of the Customer and Property Services Team.

As a Housing Officer you will be expected to deliver high quality customer services to an allocated caseload that will ensure the organisations aims, objectives and performance standards are met or exceeded in accordance with all relevant legislation, policies, procedures, and best practice guidance, and within available budget parameters.

In particular, as a Housing Officer in Income, you will be required to undertake the functions of Albyn Housing Society’s Income Management process with the aim of delivering a supportive, and customer focused Income Management service to tenants and other service users.

Your primary focus will be recovery of rent arrears and other debts in an efficient and effective manner in accordance with our policy and procedures. You will be responsible for early identification, prevention, and intervention within an income management framework, ensuring debt levels are minimized and rental, factoring and other service driven income is maximized. You will also be required to work to specific performance targets.

Although you will be operating in a function-based specialism you should possess a good understanding of all housing management capabilities as there may be times where you will be required to carry out or operate in one of the other specialist functions of the Customer and Property Services areas. There may also be the opportunity to develop into other specialist areas depending on the needs of the business and our customers.

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**Main Responsibilities**
- Deliver effective housing management services. As a Housing officer operating in the Income function your main responsibilities will include:

- Monitor, control and progress actions for the prevention or recovery of current and former tenancy rent arrears or other tenancy related debts.
- Produce and monitor regular caseload arrears reports.
- Take proactive responsibility for the prompt collection or rent and related charges across a designated caseload, to ensure maximum collection of our main source of business income.
- Ensure timely and proactive management and early interventions in line with legislative Pre-Action Requirements (PARs).
- Negotiate and agree affordable and appropriate repayment arrangements to ensure the collection of tenancy related debts.
- Liaise with the local authority or relevant government departments on entitlement of benefits or other assistance with housing related costs.
- Attend court hearings and supply evidence and witness statements where required.
- Attend eviction enforcements to ensure security of the property and take possession.

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**About You**
- Achieved or actively working to gain a Housing HNC or equivalent qualification.
- Educated to at least ‘Higher’ grade.
- Have at least 2 years relevant work experience within housing management, tenancy support and/or allocations
- Several years’ experience of working in a customer focused environment.
- Excellent co