Vacancies

Leasehold Officer

Main Responsibility

You will be the key NHG contact for anything relating to your residents’ homes. You will build and maintain excellent relationships with residents, offering an empathetic and personal housing service. You will look into the following:

• Welcome new customers to the scheme and issue a welcome pack. Complete resident introduction to the scheme, identifying the communal areas, emergency alarms and other equipment eg Tunstall, relating to Health & Safety both in the home and communal areas and demonstrate how to use them as appropriate.

• Assist customers with understanding of responsibilities under the terms of the lease and explaining the service charges, sinking fund and payment methods.

• Support customers to assess their needs, understand and manage their risks, capture their goals and monitor progress towards them and keep the support plan up to date in our case management system.

• Undertake resident assessment forms for prospective purchasers/occupiers when required, informing solicitors of NHG decision so that sale can/cannot progress.

• Meet with residents in their homes at least twice per year, ensuring that support plans are up to date and checking key information we hold on behalf of the resident.

• Undertake regular welfare checks, risk assessments and wellbeing plans (in accordance with local procedure) to ensure that customers are safe and well.

• Deal with complaints and anti-social behaviour in line with NHG policy. Involve residents wherever possible e.g. feedback on contractors, service planning and improvement plans.

• Acknowledge any customer concerns, responding and/or escalating as required to the Housing Delivery Manager.

• Holding regular residents’ meetings and communicating effectively updates to policies, budget preparation and seeking feedback from residents.

• Work with and draw upon central C&S resources to improve services to customers and whole schemes as needed.

Property management

• Property management: repairs

• Report and manage repairs, in communal areas in line with NHG policies, standards and the resident promise.

• Raise work orders, update residents, liaise with contractors and ensure work is completed to the customers’ satisfaction.

• Oversee the work of contractors and feed into contract management frameworks to ensure continuous improvement.

• Lead customer consultation on cyclical maintenance and improvement plans, working with your manager and colleagues in the assets department to resolve any issues arising.

• Liaise with the appropriate services or departments to arrange consent for property improvements and adaptations for those with physical and/or sensory needs, in line with the requirements of the lease and appropriate policy.

Property management: health and safety

• Be the main contact for the scheme providing access to contractors (and the handyperson where applicable).

• Follow up on actions required from Fire Risk Assessments (FRA) in agreed timescales and submit evidence required in a timely fashion

Ensure that entry and exit points are regularly monitored and that communal facilities remain secure.

• Contribute to a safe working environment by being diligently carrying out health and safety duties as required by your manager, in line with Notting Hill Genesis’s policies, procedures and best practice. Work with stakeholders, internal and external, to address any safety concerns. Property management: Income collection

• Establish a good service charge payment culture in your customers helping them to identify the best, most cost effective method of payment.

• Monitor income collection at your schemes and take appropriate action to recover debt swiftly, referring cases for legal action where appropriate. • Work closely with the Resales team in ensuring the completions process is followed and new and former Leaseholders accounts are reconciled and sinking fund monies are coded to the scheme.

Property Management: Service Charge Setting

• Support your manager to set service charges each year and lead customer consultation at your sites through resident budget meetings.

• Raise and code purchase orders accurately to ensure budgets are transparent. • Ensure that documentation in respect of service charge expenditure is available for customers to view when the actuals are sent out.

• Monitor purchase orders throughout the year, flagging unexpected, unbudgeted or significant expenditure with your manager for review.

Property management: communal areas

• Maintain communal areas, ensuring they are clean and inviting and enabling customers to make best use of these spaces.

• Facilitate the use of the communal areas for activities that enhance the offer for our customers, in line with their expressed wishes

Team working

• Support colleagues and managers to respond appropriately to emergencies.

• Plan your time to be efficient and productive; maximise customer facing time; use workplace tools and systems effectively, including all relevant IT systems.

• Work collaboratively with team members across the Leasehold team, attending monthly meetings and sharing knowledge and information and providing support and motivation to new staff

The Ideal Candidate

We believe great service starts with great people, and we are committed to recruiting and developing passionate, enthusiastic, and talented individuals who can add value to our thriving organisation. You don’t need to have worked in housing before, you might just be starting out or you’ll be looking for a career change

Safeguarding - open for Basic certificate (criminal record check) issued by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)

Essential Criteria

• Experience of organising residents’ meetings and communicating 
• Of dealing with complaints and antisocial behaviour
• Of conducting welfare checks, risk assessments and wellbeing plans
• Of dealing with emergency alarms and other equipment eg Tunstall, relating to Health & Safety both in homes or similar systems and fire risk assessment
• Of raising and managing repairs including communal area
• Of Income collection
• Of supporting colleagues and managers to respond appropriately to emergencies

Qualifications and/or professional membership - Essential: Numeracy and literacy skills equivalent to NVQ2 qualification.

Essential Skills

• Strong interpersonal skills; friendly, approachable, professional
• Clear, concise and accurate written and verbal communication skills
• Able to maintain sensitive information appropriately
• Able to apply relevant legislation, policy and best practice
• Effective IT skills including basic MS Office skills, Northgate or similar

Benefits

In return we offer:

· Excellent annual leave allowance and flexible working opportunities (qualifying period may apply)

· Generous pension scheme

· Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay - we offer enhanced maternity and adoption pay in addition to statutory entitlements (qualifying period may apply)

· Employee assistance - free confidential advice and counselling services provided by independent specialist organisations

· Health cash plan

· Staff discounts - we give our staff access to discounts at hundreds of major retailers, gyms, restaurants, entertainment, days out, insurance and much more

· Interest free loans: season ticket loan, tenancy deposit loan and training loan

· Cycle to work scheme

· Life Assurance x 4 annual salary

Selection process

Step 1 If you are interested, please send your application now

Step 2 Successful candidates will be selected for an interview

Step 3 Successful candidates will be asked to do a work sample

Step 4: Final round of interviews

Please apply for this role with us online. If you are not able to apply online, please contact our HR team via jobs@nhg.org.uk to discuss your requirements.

About the Company

Notting Hill Genesis is now one of the largest housing associations in London and the south east. We own and manage more than 67,000 homes and employ around 1,500 staff. We provide homes across a range of tenures and are committed to continuing to deliver housing that is affordable to all. Our roots reach back to the 1960s when our legacy organisations were established by local people who shared a similar vision – to house west London’s working poor, providing them a home from which to build themselves and their families a secure future. For more information on what we do and what makes us different please visit: https://www.nhg.org.uk/about-us/

Our people

We value our people and both respect and celebrate their differences. We’re proud to say that our colleagues come from different backgrounds, with varied outlooks and are from all over the world. We encourage and are committed to diversity. We know that when people with varied experiences and unique points of view come together, it makes us a stronger organisation and more able to help the wide range of residents that we serve. We want all our colleagues to bring their full selves to work in a culture and environment based on respect and fairness, regardless of role, background or ability.

Our pledges

We are proud signatories of the G15 group’s diversity pledge to encourage more diversity in the boardroom and at senior level.  The pledge on ethnic diversity commits NHG to reflect the ethnic diversity of the communities we work in at all levels and particularly at senior managerial, leadership and board levels.

We have under-representation of ethnically diverse colleagues at this level and are keen to fill this gap. We welcome applications from everyone. For this role, we especially encourage ethnically diverse candidates to join us and be part of an inclusive culture that celebrates diversity, equality of opportunity and provides a place for you to grow your career.

We are also a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Disability Confident employer and have signed up to Harry’s Pledge. We actively monitor the diversity of our workforce and strive to show equal representation throughout all levels of the organisation.

To find out more about Diversity and inclusion at NHG, please visit our website.