Income Recovery Officer

Bexley is an outer London Borough with the best of both worlds, located between the hustle and bustle of London and the Garden of England, Kent. Within the borough we have award winning parks, open spaces and listed heritage sites.

We are transforming our homeless service to improve homelessness prevention, reduce temporary accommodation and end street homelessness.

You will be passionate about delivering a professional customer centred high-quality housing service that consistently impresses our customers whilst enhancing our reputation.

You will be part of a transitional change to staff working in an agile manner and to implement the housing services approach to agile working ensuring that housing services are delivered effectively.

You will be an energetic and an excellent communicator who works as part of a team that always seeks to understand first and create simple ways to keep people informed about things that are important to them. 
You will apply huge personal integrity coupled with resilience to be part of a team that is known for delivering and keeping its promises. Your team will get things done on time, to the highest standards and learn quickly when things go wrong. 
With infectious and unwavering levels of enthusiasm, inspiration and motivation you will be part of a team that is responsible for the day-to-day delivery of the: - 

Income recovery service 
Principle Accountabilities and Responsibilities  
You will work effectively to monitor arrears of temporary accommodation charges and to take timely and effective action to minimise the amount of both current and former arrears owing. 
You will accurately record receipt and register new housing rent accounts in accordance with Housing Legislation. 
You will process all new rent account applications for those households in temporary accommodation in a timely manner and in accordance with required timescales.  
You will request additional information where appropriate to ensure cases are accurately recorded. Issue subsequent forms if necessary to enable assessments to be carried out and make referrals as necessary to other departments or organisations. 
You will verify applicant’s information and circumstances and obtain all necessary information as required by further contact with the applicant or other agencies, in order to set up rent accounts correctly.  
You will liaise with internal departments within the Council in relation to setting up and maintain rent accounts and any subsequent Income Recovery action as necessary.  
Provide all relevant information to assist colleagues to complete a Discharge of Duty 
Send weekly emails to Prevention/Assessment team leaders with details of the eviction letters issued, this allow them to check the homeless applications, if they have not had a decision, they can fast track the application, so a decision is made before the eviction date.  
Work closely with legal, helping them with queries, providing them with information and confirmation of action to be taken forward. Ensure rental systems are updated with any progress made by legal.  
Referrals are made to legal for all PSL/Street property once full recovery process has been followed. All information is provided to legal to enable them to start legal proceedings. Once legal have exhausted all avenues, prepare a notice to quit and delivery this by hand to the tenant. 

Once a court date has been set, attend court as a representative of Bexley Council with all the relevant documentation to obtain a possession order.  

  
You will work closely with the Council’s HB department to check that housing benefit payments have been made where appropriate and to resolve any queries in order to maximise income for the Council.  Contact housing benefit for information on suspended or cancelled claims, contact tenant to resolve if necessary, key on new or amended claims. Uploading documentation.  
Raise issues with housing benefit and Council tax if identified tenant receiving duplicate benefits for rental costs.  
Liaise with HB and C/tax payments rejected into our suspense account, that are payments towards C/tax or HB overpayment. To prevent tenants being chased for missed payments.  
Where arrears have accrued you will take prompt action to minimise the debt to the Council by contacting the debtor to request payment and if necessary, initiating the council’s debt recovery process. Repayment plans arranged and monitored; referrals made for vulnerable clients to outside agencies.  
Provide Temporary Accommodation team leader with a list of evictions on Wednesday before the eviction date (Monday) to enable them to contact landlords/letting agency to confirm eviction.   
Make a last attempt to resolve issue/contact the tenant before eviction date.  
Where households have left their accommodation owing rent you will take necessary action to trace the whereabouts of the household, following the former recovery processes before referring any debt over £300 to legal. Legal proforma to be co

 For the full list of essential and desirable criteria for this role then please refer to the Person Specification within the Job Description attached. 

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)  (If applicable) 

This authority is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. 

This post is considered by the authority to be a customer-facing position; as such it falls within scope of the Code of Practice on English language requirement for public sector workers. The council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements.

The appropriate standards are set out in the JD/Person Specification. These will be applied during the recruitment/selection and probationary stages.

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Darren Chetram, Assessment & Reviews Manager; Darren.Chetram@bexley.gov.uk. 

We will offer you in return a package that includes a competitive salary, an excellent pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays. 

Use the ‘Apply for vacancy’ button. 
Please note that the system has a one-hour time limit. We would advise you to prepare your answers separately and then copy and paste into the online form once finalised and have your CV and/or Supporting statement ready to upload. 

If any mandatory fields are missing, a pop-up box will appear at the top of the page advising which sections require completion. Please check your Junk email for any correspondence. 
 
Additional Information 

As a disability confident employer Bexley welcomes applications from people with all disabilities, including hidden disabilities and mental health conditions. We will interview any disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria. If you require reasonable adjustments to be made to any part of the recruitment process due to your disability, please contact us on  recruitment@bexley.gov.uk  
 
This role may be available as a development opportunity through secondment for the Council’s existing employees.  The Council’s Secondment Scheme can be found here. If this option is of interest, please contact the recruiting manager.