City Inspector WCC618822

Job Details:

Salary range: £40,005 - £43,824 per annum
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, SW1E 6QP
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Permanent
Closing date: 30 October 2024
Contact details for Informal discussion: Ian Wareing, Team Leader St James via email on IWAREING@WESTMINSTER.GOV.UK

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF MOHAMAD’S CUSTOMER SERVICE SKILLS

Public Protection & Licensing in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where people are passionate about keeping our streets safe and clean.  

Take Mohamad, a City Inspector who looks after the Little Venice ward. No two days are the same for Mohamad when he's out and about conducting ward inspections. He could be doing a licensing premises inspection one day and advising businesses and residents on the proper way to handle their waste on another. But before he joined Westminster, he used to work in banking, where he honed his skills in customer service and people management. 

And those skills matters because, while he occasionally needs to enforce the law, his job is mostly about building strong relationships: educating businesses and residents about the impact of certain enviro-crimes. 

One day he came across some unmarked commercial waste dumped on Edgware Road. Following procedures, he investigated this waste, carefully collecting evidence. Yet, despite his attempts to make contact with the commercial premises, the owners wouldn’t cooperate.

Digging deeper, he worked collaboratively with different Westminster departments such as businesses rates and licensing, and discovered multiple businesses registered at the same address. After issuing six different notices, three of the business failed to comply and were successfully prosecuted. 

So while Mohamad’s successfully swapped his financial know-how for expertise in local authority legislation, it’s his people skills and powers of persuasion he’s still proudest of. 

The Role:

As City Inspector, you can make your own powerful contribution to keeping Westminster safe and clean – just like Mohamad. Whatever your background, you can look forward to tailored support and training to develop in your role. That includes the chance to gain recognised qualifications, sponsored by us. 

You’ll become a specialist in delivering regulatory compliance and community safety across the public realm. And at Westminster, you’ll apply legislation above and beyond what other local authorities do. After all, we are a place unlike any other. As the entertainment capital of the UK, with the biggest nighttime economy in Europe, we’re home to a diverse community and welcome tourists from around the world. 

Here, you’ll manage your own caseload – from environment and street-based issues, through to ensuring compliance in licensed premises. Your responsibilities will include inspecting venues as varied as nightclubs, casinos and gambling shops, through to tackling fly tipping, investigating noise complaints and responding to reports of anti-social behaviour. 

With such a wide scope of enforceable powers, no two days will ever be the same, and you’ll develop your knowledge and experience across all legislative disciplines. We’ll look to you to identify issues in the public realm. Taking on a public-facing ambassadorial role for legislative compliance, you will enjoy the unique satisfaction of seeing visible improvements to our prestigious City for which you’re personally responsible. Along the way, you’ll work with a range of partners to first educate and if required use enforcement powers to help keep our communities and visitors safe.  

In return you can look forward to an excellent benefits package including agile working, an employee assistance scheme, discounted leisure service access, staff networks, and access to wellbeing services.  

Please refer to the Job Description for more information. 

About You:

You’ll bring to the role a range of transferable skills. Great communication will be key to your success – from collaborating with colleagues and partners, to building trusted customer relationships quickly. An ability to prioritise, assess risk, stay calm under pressure and de-escalate conflict will be fundamental in this role. Proficient in responding to complaints both in writing and verbally is essential. Balancing political, corporate, business and residents’ demands and expectations, you’ll listen carefully and influence skillfully. Legislative challenges can require innovative solutions, so a flair for creative thinking will be helpful, as will skills in gathering information, interpreting rules and regulations, and making evidence-based decisions. We also expect you to be capable of managing your own workload with minimal supervision as you contribute to the performance of the team, the wider directorate and Westminster City Council.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit  https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.