Neighbourhood Customer Service Officer London, England
Job description
Founded in 1967 as the Merton Family Housing Trust, we have since grown into an organisation with over 7,000 homes across nine south London boroughs. We are a provider of homes for rent (social and affordable), shared ownership, outright sale, and supported housing. We also have a small portfolio of commercial properties and garages.
It is really important to us that you share and reflect our values making sure our customers receive a dependable and localised service. As a Neighbourhood Customer Service Officer, you will provide a highly efficient and effective Neighbourhood management service to a patch of approximately 600 multi tenure properties and estates across South London. Ensuring high levels of visibility and engagement across the patch and building effective relationships with residents and other stakeholders to ensure that we have homes to be proud of and services that can be trusted.
This could be a great opportunity for you to step up into a neighbourhood customer service role. You will take ownership of your area and be supported by the wider team and your manager to achieve targets and make a difference to the lives of our customers.
You will effectively communicate with residents when queries are raised to you and respond in line with the principals outlined by the Corporate strategy. This will include taking the lead on matters that fall within the remit of the Housing Team and/or signposting to other service areas where required and keeping them updated.
A day in the life:
You will:
- be flexible and adaptable to hybrid working.
- carry out regular estate inspections, monitoring cleaning and grounds maintenance service contracts and acting as the conduit to ensure the safety of blocks and estates as well as drive up standards.
- ensure fire risk assessment actions are dealt with in a timely manner.
- respond to breaches of tenancy agreements, including misuse of property.
- process mutual exchanges, successions, and all other types of assignments.
- work with the customer and their advocates and other third parties where it may be necessary to consider a management transfer and make recommendations. This will include, but not limited to, incidents of Domestic Abuse, Gang Violence or MARAC recommendations.
- work with the Resident Support Team on safeguarding issues and support the customer to ensure they receive any necessary help or assistance where required.
- work with the Estate Standards Team to ensure issues are resolved and resident enquiries are dealt with in a timely manner.
- work with the Anti-social Behaviour Team to ensure that cases are logged, and where necessary joint investigations are carried.
- progress tenancy enforcement action where required and lead on legal cases with the assistance of the Legal Team.
- review service charge bills to ensure they charges correctly reflect the service delivery and address any queries arising from the charges.
- support the management of empty properties and work with the Repair and Allocations Teams to ensure efficient turnaround, undertaking assessments of properties as well as viewings and sign ups to ensure the customer receives a seamless service.
- Arrange and attend regular resident meetings and resident estate inspections with the high-profile schemes within your management area and work with them to build strong communication and trust.
- effectively communicate with residents to ensure they are fully engaged, and any queries responded to.
- be part of a paid 24/7 emergency duty rota (approx. 1 week in every 8-10 weeks)
What you’ll need:
A housing qualification or equivalent Housing Management knowledge and/or experience- Ability to drive and access to a vehicle is essential
- A sound knowledge of tenancy management
- Ability to operate and be flexible in a changing environment to respond to emerging priorities
- Understanding of organisational dynamics and strong relationship building, interpersonal and influencing skills in dealing people of all levels of seniority
- Experience of working to tight deadlines, to deliver high quality outputs to agreed deadlines
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to engage with a variety of people
- Computer literate with knowledge of Word and Excel packages
- Commitment to Confidentiality and Data Protection
- Commitment to live the Wandle Values
What next?
If you want to be part of a winning team that takes pride in delivering a positive experience to our customers and believe you have the skills and experience to be successful in this role, we would love to hear from you.
Please apply with your CV and supporting statement on no more than two sides of A4 ensuring you address the ‘What you will need to have” section set out in role profile by 5:00pm on Monday, 27th February.
Please also note that ahead of the final stage interviews you will be asked to undertake a number of online tests/assessments.
Interviews will be held week commencing 6th March 2023 - virtually by Microsoft Teams or in person.
For more information about Wandle, including our corporate strategy, click here: https://www.wandle.com/careers/
