Housing Advisor

Housing Advisor

Akton Recruitment has an opening for a Housing Advisor
- Provide a professional and compliant, customer facing Homelessness and Housing Solutions Advice Service firmly focussed on the prevention and relief of homelessness
- Support all officers, systems, and processes in operating the Homelessness and Housing Solutions and Voids, Allocations & Lettings teams Housing Advisor
- To be responsible and accountable for the Local Authorities operations in accordance with its legal obligations to provide professional housing and homelessness advice services in accordance with: Part VI & VII Housing Act 1996 (as amended); Homelessness Reduction Act 2017; Welfare Reform, Safeguarding and the Children’s Act.
- Deliver superior quality Homelessness and Housing Solutions and Advice Services that are customer centric and have high regard for equality, diversity, understanding and respect for people and their individual circumstances.
- Act as the central hub for all approaches and enquiries to the homelessness, housing solutions and void and allocation service, committing to resolve all approaches and enquiries at first point of contact and where they cannot be resolved, ensuring timely co-ordination of onward referral to the right team or person.
- Operate a telephone duty system that ensures that all inbound telephone calls to the service are handled professionally and within any set service levels in operation at the time.
- Operate a professional customer facing triage service at public offices on a duty rota system, offering primary homelessness and housing solutions advice in accordance with Part VI & VII of the Homelessness Act, The Housing Acts, Homelessness Reduction Act and the Homelessness Code of Guidance, that enables customers to make informed decisions about their housing options and that enables you to make a decision to refer the case to a specialist officer through relevant systems and processes in operation at the time.
- In cases of emergency homelessness, undertake to find and secure temporary accommodation on behalf of specialist case officers
- Promote self-service at every opportunity and encourage and provide professional and courteous assistance to customers in accessing all aspects of the service that have become digitalised, either in person in public offices, in writing or over the telephone.
- In accordance with the Allocations Policy, give appropriate advice to applicants wishing to join the housing register, so that expectations are clearly managed, and they can make informed decisions about their options before joining the register.
- Operate, administer, and maintain the Redditch Home Choice system for both new and transfer applicants through to full registration in the appropriate priority band.
- Assess and administer all incoming correspondence in accordance with policy and process in operation at the time.
- Assist and support all officers and managers in the service in undertaking their day-to-day duties
- Be responsible and accountable for the performance of yourself, your team, and the service, regularly reporting and feeding back on performance and being outspoken on perceived risks or threats to the service or on any emerging opportunities to improve what we do.
- Operate in accordance with all Council policies, guidance, and codes.
- Be responsible and accountable for effective and accurate operation of relevant IT systems in relation to delivery of your area of the service.