Home Improvement Agency Caseworker WCC618594

Job Details:

Salary range: £40,005 - £43,824 per annum
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, SW1E 6QP
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Permanent 
Vetting requirements: Enhanced DBS Check
Closing date: 27 October 2024
Contact details for an informal discussion: Home Improvement Agency Team Manager via email at SNI-DHUBHAIN@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 a Home Improvement Agency (HIA) Caseworker, you’ll make your own lasting contribution. You’ll play an integral role in delivering a specialist service that improves the lives of our most vulnerable residents. 

Joining the HIA team, you’ll work alongside surveyors, handypersons and service support officers. We work together to make adaptations and improvements so that our disabled and older residents can live independently, comfortably and safely in their own homes. It’s a dynamic environment, with a strong sense of community. 

Owning and managing a portfolio of casework, you’ll explore options for how to progress major adaptations that ultimately improve our residents’ lives. You’ll be the main point of contact, providing advice and guidance to residents, colleagues and managers to identify risk, support the resolution of issues and inform decision making. It can be challenging at times, but those challenges also bring learning opportunities. 

This is meaningful, fulfilling work. It’s a great professional development opportunity too.  With ongoing learning opportunities, you’ll build a varied skillset as well as expertise across a breadth of mandatory and discretionary grants.  

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

Preferably you’ll have experience of customer-facing casework management in Housing, Social Services, Health & Social Care, or a related field. 

With strong interpersonal and communication skills you should be able to work with a range of different stakeholders including property owners and registered social landlords, while keeping residents’ needs at the heart of everything you do. You’ll bring the ability to work independently too, managing your own portfolio of cases.

We’re looking for you to be able to build trusted relationships, liaising between vulnerable individuals and service providers. And, with an understanding of the enhanced duty of care when delivering services to vulnerable people, you should be able to empathise and understand their needs other than those related to housing. 

Ideally, you’ll also have a good working knowledge of Home Improvement Grant systems (Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996) and to be able to provide accurate advice on alternative sources of funding available to enable residents to undertake works required to their home including grants, loans, equity release etc.

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.