Housing Assistant

**About Us**:
**THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM**

Housing and Commercial Partnerships in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where people use their vision and commitment to open doors for the next generations.

Nothing beats the feeling of helping someone find their passion. At Westminster City Council, our City Lions team helps young local people engage with culture, creativity and dreams. When they came across a lonely, isolated 16-year-old who called himself a failure, they knew what to do. They worked 1-2-1 to find the thing this boy really loved. YouTube, it turned out. But it’s impossible to turn that into a career, right? Wrong. A week later, he was enrolled on the British Film Institute film-making programme. It was the ultimate light-bulb moment. And it turned him into what he is today - a budding Spielberg with a world of opportunity at his feet.

Please view the extraordinary story of the Impossible Dream **here**.

**The Role**:
As a Housing Assistant you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s success. Offering a polite, friendly and customer-based service to the visitors at our Housing Service Centres, you’ll aim to provide first contact resolution to the majority of enquiries you receive. Committed to maintaining and developing your knowledge and expertise as it relates to Housing in our borough, you’ll have a strong focus on supporting and safeguarding any vulnerable residents you work with, and take a proactive approach to the management of complaints.

Day-to-day you’ll be responsible for opening and closing the Housing Service Centre reception, managing the leaflets, posters, electronic screens and other information provided, and logging keys in and out. Using a Customer Relationship Management system to record visits, and booking appointments for residents with relevant staff, you’ll also identify opportunities for improvements and proactively share ideas with the team.

There’ll be times when you have to deal with challenging behaviour from a resident, but you’ll remain calm and polite at all times, take time to understand their concerns and then work in partnership with Housing Officers, Income Officers, Leasehold Advisors, ASB Case Officers and Repairs Surveyors to resolve the issue. We’ll also expect you to seek feedback by completing customer satisfaction surveys, use this to improve the service we provide, maintain due diligence regarding any fraudulent activity, and keep up to date with the latest legislative procedures and obligations.

Please refer to the **Job Description**for more information.

**About You**:
With well developed experience of working as a member of a reception or customer service team where you’ve delivered a first class customer service both face-to-face and via telephone, your calm, friendly and empathetic manner will allow you to deal successfully with challenging complaints and problem resolution. A professional and collaborative team player with the ability to work well in a fast-paced environment, experience of working within a housing management or public sector setting would be desirable.

It goes without saying that you’ll have superb interpersonal and communication skills, and in addition to the ability to prioritise your own workload, you should be capable of working to set targets in a pressurised environment. We’ll also expect you to have a strong understanding of and commitment to the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion, and be prepared to train to become a first aider.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

**What We Offer**:
Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

As a forward thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.