Housing Income Officer

Housing Income Officer

About us at Hounslow

We'd love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we've built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London's most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in "Harness the Mix". It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There's space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

About The Role

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of our Housing Income Team as an Income Officer. In this role, you are compassionate in your approach, but outcome focussed and highly motivated to ensure income collection targets are achieved. You build up trusting relationships with tenants, identifying those who need additional support to help them pay their rent, service charges and any arrears.

You monitor rent accounts and income recovery, taking action where early intervention may prevent arrears escalating. You have a good understanding of welfare benefits to help tenants maximise their income and sustain their tenancies.

About The Team You'll Be Working In

• You will work collaboratively with your colleagues and partner agencies to ensure that the council maximises income recovery alongside tenants getting the very best service and opportunities to live independently and safely in their homes.
• You will co-ordinate work with others across the service to ensure cross cuttings issues are not considered in isolation, and solutions are joined up borough wide.
• You will work in a person-centred way, identifying unmet needs and working proactively with other agencies to ensure those needs are met, including making timely referrals to internal departments and external agencies and proactively follow up to ensure referrals are acted on.

About You

If the points below resonate with you, we'd love you to put in an application:

• You have experience of self-managing and analysing high volumes of information and an understanding of income recovery techniques, welfare benefits, the council's role as a landlord and associated legislation and regulations relating to tenancy matters.
• You are a great communicator and excellent negotiator to engage effectively with a broad range of people to influence and persuade.
• You act with integrity, take personal responsibility and handle stress effectively while maintaining high levels of motivation and enthusiasm to achieve high levels of income recovery for the council alongside successful outcomes for our tenants.

Basic DBS check is required for the role.

Closing date: 10 March 2025.