Housing Options Officer

Temporary Housing Options Officer
Job Ref: N Warwickshire 5247775
Pay Rate: Up to £16.30 per hour PAYE depending on experience
Hours per week: 37 Monday – Friday, normal working hours
Role Length: This opening assignment is for 5 months
City: Atherstone, Warwickshire
Hybrid working – 3 days a week in the office. It will be 5 days initially until training is completed.
Pay rate negotiable for the right candidate
Housing Options Officers assess homeless applications and deliver prevention duties. They also assess waiting list applicants. We require an experienced officer that can deliver homelessness duties and has a positive approach to team working.
Key Responsibilities:
To ensure that good quality information about housing options is readily available for customers and to personally convey that information to customers who contact the Council for housing advice.
Work closely with partners to prevent homelessness to support this particular group.
Help to promote the housing options service to encourage applicants in housing need to use the service and therefore enable the Council to provide assistance through early intervention.
Implement a wide range of housing options. This will include supporting applicants to access options (for example access to prevention funds, debt advice services and support services, private sector leasing schemes, Local Authority Mortgage Scheme, supported housing) as well implementing those that will assist them to find alternative housing (for example mutual exchange register, housing register, rent guarantee scheme).
Administrate the Council’s mutual exchange list service as part of providing options for applicants.
Undertake the initial assessment of the circumstances of homeless applicants and decide whether the Prevention or Relief Duty is owed to them.
If the Prevent or Relief duty is owed to undertake a needs assessment of the homeless household, to provide a Personal Housing Plan for the applicant and keep both under review through close case management. Action will be required to take reasonable steps to assist the applicant to sustain their current accommodation or ensure that they are not homeless.
Following the initial assessment if the applicant meets the homelessness main duty criteria to ascertain their circumstances and refer them to the Housing Options and Lettings Team Leader or the Homeless Persons Officer.
Work closely with and support applicants to find solutions to their housing problems by using either agreed prevention tools or by working with an applicant to agree a bespoke solution to meet their needs.
Advise applicants whether they qualify to join the Council’s Housing Register and whether this is a positive housing option for them.
Assess individual applicants in accordance with the Lettings Scheme and ensure the efficient and fair implementation of the Council’s policy and procedures. This will include undertaking the necessary circumstances and information checks and registering applications. Verifying documentation, acting to prevent fraudulent applications and contacting other professionals as appropriate will be part of these duties.
Collect and collate, review and report on relevant data on the options service to inform the good management, improvement and development of the service.
Ensure the Council’s housing options and advice service is customer focused and where possible to work with customers to gain feedback in order to improve the service for them and promote the services provided.
NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via ##### by quoting the job reference and job title exactly. SEE DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS AD.
To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would suggest that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, rather than as a PDF
If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than entertaining umbrella pay terms, we do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity.
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