Senior Housing & Homelessness Officer

Job Introduction

About the Service

Following the award of specialist government funding, we have created several new roles within our Housing & Homelessness Service to deliver our ambitious plans to prevent homelessness, reduce rough sleeping and protect vulnerable tenants. These newly created roles offer an exciting opportunity to make the role your own and help shape how the service is delivered from day one.

Worcester City Council’s Housing & Homelessness Service is committed to supporting individuals and families experiencing homelessness or at risk of losing their home. We provide a wide range of support, both in-house and through strong partnerships, to help our customers achieve stable and secure housing.

Prevention is at the heart of our approach—we work proactively to help people remain in their homes or move to more suitable accommodation before reaching crisis point. In recent years, we have made significant improvements to our temporary accommodation, enhanced the support we offer, and focused on improving the overall customer experience. We are proud of the high-quality, person-centred service we deliver.

We are a large, dynamic service made up of five teams delivering a broad range of housing functions (see structure chart for more detail).

About the Role

As Senior Housing & Homelessness Officer, you will use your expert knowledge of homelessness, housing options and temporary accommodation legislation, policy and practice to provide operational support to Officers and Managers to ensure the effective, efficient and legally compliant delivery of the range of services delivered by the Housing & Homelessness Service.

Working across the service, the role will be varied to meet changing demands and priorities, giving you the opportunity to develop and enhance your knowledge and skills across the full remit of the service, including operational delivery, strategic planning, policy development and implementation of new practice. You will also lead on complex homelessness cases which require significant multi agency co-ordination, as well as supporting managers with statutory homelessness reviews and housing register appeals.

About You

• The successful candidate will have expert knowledge of relevant legislation, policy and practice and considerable experience of applying this within a statutory framework.
• You will need strong communications and partnership skills to build and maintain relationships with colleagues and external agencies.
• You will be confident in providing advice and guidance to colleagues and partners and sharing your knowledge and expertise.
• You will have a thorough approach with excellent attention to detail and an understanding of value for money principles.
• You will be flexible and adaptable with a positive and proactive attitude.
• You will be passionate about delivering the best service possible to our customers and partners and to driving improvements

This is a great opportunity for an experienced homelessness professional looking to broaden their skills across operational delivery and strategic housing functions, with exposure to all aspects of the local authority Housing function, training and development opportunities and a leadership culture of achieving excellence in all we do.

For full details of the role requirements, please see the attached Role Profile.

If you are passionate about delivering excellent public services and committed to driving positive change and improvement for our customers, now is a great time to join us.

For further information about the role, please contact Rosey Badham, Housing & Homelessness Service Manager at rosey.badham@worcester.gov.uk or Jake Nightingale, Homelessness Team Leader at jake.nightingale@worcester.gov.uk

We welcome applications from all sections of the community. We would like to help you shine during this process. If you need any assistance with applying, please contact the Recruitment team on recruitment@worcester.gov.uk. We can assist with alternative formats for your application.

Closing date: 28th September

Interview date: 16th October