New Tenancy Officer

1 X New Tenancy Officer - Part Time - 18.5Hrs - Permanent

Gateshead Council is responsible for the day to day management of almost 20,000 homes.

We are committed to providing our customers with the highest quality of service and we believe that the key to achieving this is to recruit enthusiastic, talented people with the right skills, knowledge, attitude and behaviour.

As a member of the New Tenancy Team, knowing your customer is essential and ensuring they get the best possible start to their tenancy is vital in order to maximise opportunities for tenancy sustainment. Your role will therefore begin before a tenancy starts. You will be responsible for signing up new tenants and offering advice and support as well as taking timely recovery action when arrears develop. The service works in partnership with a number of agencies and support services so referrals need to be made where required.

As a New Tenancy Officer, you will play a key role in providing advice and guidance to customers about rent payments and welfare benefits. Providing a customer focused income management service, you will work with customers to maximise rent collection, prevent arrears and provide advice to help support successful tenancies.

Ensuring customer accounts are well managed, you’ll have honest conversations with customers about their responsibilities to pay their rent on time and regularly, helping them make informed choices and signposting to further support services where necessary. Building effective relationships with colleagues and external partners, you’ll will promote a working approach that is both collaborative and fair in order to support customers to sustain their tenancies where possible and escalating cases where this may not be possible.

To be successful in the role it is essential that you can demonstrate strong customer service skills, are extremely solution focused and have a commitment to continued service improvements. In addition to this you should have a good understanding of the welfare benefit system, in order to assess benefit entitlement as well as any additional support needs.

It’s important that you are comfortable managing your own case load and with current circumstances in mind some aspects of this role may require homeworking. You will need to be self-motivated and have excellent time management skills to ensure caseloads are managed effectively and in a timely manner.

You will be commitment to continual personal learning including keeping up to date with relevant legislation and sharing best practice and knowledge with colleagues and partners to enhance the advice and support offered to our customers.

The ability to adapt your style of communication in order to engage with customers, colleagues and partners is extremely important to achieving the best possible outcomes. In addition to this you will have a high level of personal resilience and coping strategies to enable you to manage difficult and often emotional situations and setbacks.

Please take a look at the full job profile via this link JOB PROFILE. It’s important that you read it in full and check that you meet the essential criteria

To apply please complete an application form, which you can do electronically online at www.gateshead.gov.uk. Please make sure that you demonstrate you meet the essential criteria in the job profile.

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Ian Burton, Legal Recovery Manager on 0191 433 5836 or e-mail ianburton@gateshead.gov.uk