Policy and Performance Officer

**Policy And Performance Officer**

**Cambridge City Council**

**£15-£18 per hour**

**Start Date: ASAP**

**Hours: 37 hours per week**

**Contract will be running for 4 months with the possibility of extension.**

**Job Purpose**:
To provide a quality assurance function, serving the City Homes, Housing Advice, Supported Housing and Estates and Facilities services. The post holder will offer support to customer-facing services within the section by helping to produce clear policy and procedure, quality standards and guidelines.

The role will involve supporting the Housing Services Managers in each team to continuously develop and improve services by monitoring activity, collecting and collating customer feedback and reporting on performance.

**Service Roles & Responsibilities**:
**1. Quality assurance and policy development**:
a) To work within the policy and performance unit to help deliver projects designed to improve performance in key areas, as identified by the Housing Services and Estates and Facilities Management Team.

b) To liaise with front line staff and managers on the development of policies, procedures and other guidelines, which support good customer service and service improvement.

c) To support the Housing Services Managers and Resident Engagement Officer to establish improvement plans where required and to prepare for independent external inspections of the service.

d) To report on the service's performance indicators and performance measures quarterly and on an ad hoc basis as and when required.

f) Support all officers within the service, including Housing Officers, Senior Housing Advisors, Housing Advice co-ordinators and Independent Living Supervisors to monitor the quality of case management work.

g) To work with the housing teams to devise strategies for improvement where poor performance is identified.

**2. Customer engagement**: To work with our Resident Involvement team:
a) To devise customer feedback surveys from those using Housing services, collate the results and highlight trends and key messages.

b) To identify trends from these surveys and ensure that the Housing Services Managers are aware of these trends.

c) To support the Resident Engagement Officer, Housing Services Managers and their teams to deliver consultations on any aspect of the work of the services with customers, stakeholders and staff.

d) To coordinate work around service user involvement amongst voluntary sector partners and others who provide homelessness services

e) To work closely with the Tenant Liaison Officer in Estates and Facilities to capture identify key issues for tenants and leaseholders receiving repairs or planned maintenance services

f) To analyse complaints, identifying service improvements and developing action plans with service managers to address service weaknesses; to provide quarterly reports to Housing Services Management Team on progress against any live action plans.

**3. Information systems**:
a) To produce factual reports on customer profiles and service outputs as required by the Housing Services managers and to maintain a working knowledge of all information systems used by the section to understand the efficiency and function of such systems and how each supports officers in their roles.

b) To recommend improvements to systems and working practices to the management team where appropriate.

c) Develop, maintain and implement sector specific IT systems.

d) Lead on a training programme for users of those systems both for internal sections and departments and external agencies.

e) Co-ordinate information displayed on the internet and intranet for the Housing Service.

f) Respond to information requests from internal and external sources, including Freedom of Information requests.

**4. Contract monitoring**:
a) To maintain a log of all contracts, grants or service level agreements entered into by the section and to ensure that external reports are received on time and in the format required by the specification.

b) To assist managers by highlighting areas where commissioned services appear to be performing particularly well or, conversely, where there is a cause for concern about performance.

**PERSON SPECIFICATION**

**Experience**:

- Practical experience of work in a social housing/housing advice setting
- Experience of extracting data from a range of contemporary software packages
- Experience of using core business IT systems and software packages such as excel, including the ability to extract and analyse data and reports from them.
- Demonstrable experience in the use and management of complex systems and reporting tools at NVQ level or equivalent
- Experience of Project Management

**Knowledge and Skill**:

- Demonstrates a sound awareness and understanding of national and local housing options policy issues
- Knowledge of research techniques, including sources of comparative data
- Planning and organisational skills
- Written communication and interperson