Housing Services Manager
General Housing | Squared Homes
Contract: Permanent
Salary: £48,000 – £50,000 per annum (depending on experience)
Hours: 37 hours per week (Monday to Friday)
Location: Luton & South Bedfordshire (agile working across customer properties)
Essential Car User Allowance paid in addition to mileage reimbursement
About Squared
Squared is a not-for-profit housing association supporting communities across Luton and South Bedfordshire since 1962. We are a welcoming, inclusive organisation where people feel valued, supported and empowered to make a real difference.
Our Homes Department are vital divisions of Squared providing more than just housing to our customers who are most in need. We work closely with a range of partners including the Department for Work and Pensions, Luton Borough Council and Central Bedfordshire Council along with our portfolio of private landlords.
The role overseas our Housing Services Team who look after around 440 homes for independent living for people in need in our local community, spread across Luton, Dunstable, Caddington and Barton le Clay.
Our Benefits
-
33 days annual leave (including bank holidays), increasing with service (up to 38 days)
- Option to buy or sell up to 5 days leave
- Free Health Cashplan (after probation)
- Canada Life WeCare Employee Assistance Programme
- Pension scheme (Squared contributes 1.33% of employee contribution up to 8%)
- Life Assurance
- Personal Accident Cover
- Staff benefits portal with shopping discounts
- Essential Car User Allowance (in addition to mileage payments)
- Flexible, supportive working approach
About the Role
You will play an important role in Squared, being responsible for overseeing and developing the provision of high-quality housing management and housing-related support services to all Squared customers in general needs, sheltered and private leased accommodation.
Excelling in both written and verbal communication, you will be responsible for leading the Homes Team, ensuring our customers and landlords needs are met and exceeded whilst searching for innovative ways to enable as many people as possible to benefit from our limited housing resource.
You will work closely with our Homes with Support, Property Services and Finance teams to provide a complete housing and support solution to our customers throughout their personal journey, working with customers to achieve sustainable tenancies through effective management of arrears, property, ASB, safeguarding and neighbourhood issues.
You will have oversight of the lease management of our private lettings’ services, managing the day to day operational service provision to help prospective and current landlords, ensuring a high quality service is delivered through the smooth running of the department.
You will be an integral part of our operational management team; being hands-on in the management of the services; analysing and improving processes and working to improve quality, productivity and efficiency.
What You’ll Be Doing
-
Management responsibility and oversight of the Homes Team; promoting and delivering a customer-centred service that is responsive to both customer and landlord needs, and places customer influence at the heart of the service.
- Overseeing the team, ensuring they receive regular one to ones and personal reviews, to support and encourage team member development, establishing learning and development needs, and contributing to the annual learning and development plan.
- Working in collaboration with the Leadership Team to develop and deliver the Housing Strategy and business plan.
- Continuously developing the portfolio of properties including identifying need, sourcing properties to Squared standard with the wider teams and negotiating with landlords where appropriate.
- Evaluating operational practices with due regard to risk, statutory and regulatory requirements and best practice to help improve delivery and development of the annual business plan to help drive continuous improvement.
- Identifying and assessing opportunities for operational innovation and continuous service improvements, championing innovative solutions to workflow, working practices and data management; seeking continuous improvement in systems and workflow management; bringing cost and time efficiencies across the broad spectrum of operations.
- Streamlining and reviewing processes to increase output without increasing cost.
- Closely monitoring and managing void levels, rent collection, rent arrears, landlord payments and other key performance indicators; taking action to ensure targets are met and relevant Squared policies and procedures are followed.
- Ensure ASB is proactively managed and escalated where appropriate to gain the swiftest positive outcome for our customers and neighbourhoods.
- Safeguarding issues must be prioritised, escalated and addressed in accordance with Squared’s Safeguarding policy ensuring no one in need is placed at risk without support and intervention.
- Ensuring all complaints are effectively dealt with and monitored in line with Squared policies and that the complainant is kept informed of progress.
- Build and develop strong relationships with potential and existing private landlords and external key stakeholders, customers and colleagues giving advice and feedback as required.
- Ensuring that effective systems and procedures are in place to support customers in maintaining their tenancies.
- Ensure that all data recorded by the Housing Team is accurate, time sensitive, accessible and reportable within all data systems in use.
- Escalate tenancy and ASB cases through the legal frameworks as necessary with oversight of witness statements and evidence to support injunctions and court applications; representing Squared in court and liaising with Solicitors and other agencies when necessary.
- Ensuring the work of the team aligns with the Squared focus on tenancy sustainment and manages the landlord relationships.
- Liaising with all relevant external agencies, local authorities and other partners, including other Squared departments and stakeholders; to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction with our services.
- Attend networking and partnership meetings to gain support and ideas from external organisations, promoting Squared services to the wider community.
- Keeping up to date with legislation affecting the service; ensuring that the services comply with relevant legislation and regulatory requirements, policy and good practice in respect of day-to-day operation.
- Accountability for budget management and review.
- Accountability for identifying, setting, measuring and monitoring key performance indicators for the Housing department; setting meaningful KPIs and targets for the department; ensuring that staff are fully engaged in the performance outcomes that are required and are supported and coached to deliver them; producing regular performance monitoring reports and taking action where necessary for performance improvement and to be responsible for meeting any requirements highlighted through audits; reporting to the leadership team on a monthly basis.
- Acting at all times in accordance with the Squared values - being a champion of a values led culture and an ambassador for the organisation.
- Understanding and following Squared policies and procedures at all times, including Health and Safety and Fairness.
- Maintain strong and effective relationships with internal teams across Squared and external partners.
- You may be asked to achieve additional objectives as part of your development or as the role evolves.
About You
We’re looking for someone who is:
Understand: is consistent, approachable and friendly. Promotes and ensures others support equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion. Recognises and celebrates the success of others. Supports the development of others to achieve success. Grow: is open to new ideas, ways of working and improvements. Strives for continuous improvement. Takes responsibility and being accountable for projects and initiatives. Developing good practices and making improvements to reflect changing needs. Explaining why things need to be changed and getting others on board with this. Recognise: Gains credibility by being calm, capable and confident and treating customers and colleagues with genuine respect. Communicates in a concise, clear and transparent way, prioritising tasks effectively. Genuinely respects customers, colleagues and third-party contacts. Deliver: Shows commitment and works collaboratively to ensure what we do has measurable outcomes and makes business sense. Shows your enthusiasm or passion for what Squared does and supports the direction we’re moving in.
Play: Recognising two heads are better than one; using co-production to engage with customers, enhancing service delivery; understanding the power of play, to contribute to personal resilience, overcoming challenges and enhancing service delivery; recognising that happiness and appropriate humour helps us to reach our potential and improve performance.
Innovate: Seeing problems as challenges that can be overcome; constructively question and politely challenge with genuine interest; adopting a solutions-focused mindset, putting the customer at the heart of our decision-making; learning from other organisations; take ideas, make them better and make them work for Squared. Actively encouraging team to develop ‘adventurous thinking’ skills and welcome the opportunity to try something new even if the outcome doesn’t work as expected; embracing change by leading by example.
Essential
-
Significant experience in housing management, social housing or a related sector.
- Experience leading, managing and developing a team.
- Strong knowledge of tenancy management, rent arrears, ASB, safeguarding and housing legislation.
- Excellent customer service skills with a commitment to delivering positive outcomes.
- Experience building and maintaining relationships with landlords, partners and stakeholders.
- Strong communication, negotiation and influencing skills.
- Ability to analyse performance data and use insights to drive improvements.
- Experience managing budgets, KPIs and operational performance.
- Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities.
- A proactive, solutions-focused approach with a commitment to continuous improvement.
- Full UK driving licence and access to a vehicle for business use.
Desirable
-
Housing qualification such as CIH Level 4 or above.
- Experience working within temporary accommodation, supported housing or private leased accommodation.
- Knowledge of housing management systems such as SDM, MRI or Reapit.
- Understanding of the local housing market and challenges facing the Luton and South Bedfordshire area.
- Experience of lease management and working with private landlords.
- Experience representing an organisation in legal proceedings relating to tenancy or ASB matters.
- Project management or service improvement experience.
- Understanding of property maintenance, energy efficiency and asset management.
- Membership of a relevant professional body.
- Experience working with local authorities, charities and other community partners.
What Will Make You Stand Out
-
A passion for making a positive difference in people's lives.
- The ability to balance commercial awareness with social purpose.
- A collaborative leadership style that develops and inspires others.
- Confidence in driving change and embracing innovation.
- A genuine commitment to Squared's values and customer-first approach.
Why Work With Us?
At Squared, you’ll be part of a values-driven organisation where your work has genuine impact.
-
If you’re looking for a role where you can make a difference, develop your skills and work within a supportive and forward-thinking team, we’d love to hear from you..
Squared is a not-for-profit housing association that has been providing affordable housing in Luton and South Bedfordshire since 1962. We strive to find ways to continuously develop and grow with our tenants and residents needs at the heart of everything we do. We are proud to support the local community and embrace its diversity. Our aim is to empower individuals to make choices about their lives on their journey to lead fulfilled, independent lives, through an innovative approach to tackling local housing needs and homelessness. We don’t just give people a key, we offer on-going support to unlock their potential. We don’t just give advice; we offer genuine warmth and non-judgmental care. We don’t just provide business services; we offer expert consultancy and management. We provide homes for independent living and homes with support in Luton and Central Bedfordshire. To complement this work, we also run a lettings service for private landlords; a social enterprise inspired cleaning and gardening service; and an employee excellence focused HR consultancy - People Excellence. Every day, the people on our team make a difference to our customers. Whether they’re working with them directly or supporting behind the scenes they’re helping them regain their independence and live more fulfilled lives. As we expand our services, we’re also helping other businesses to thrive. This continued positive impact on our customers is extremely important to us and our success, and we can only achieve it by finding the right people to work with us. We look for people who share our ambitious, forward-thinking outlook and supportive, hardworking approach. If you join us, we’ll invest in you and continue to nurture your potential to help you achieve great things for you, us and – most importantly – our customers. We strongly believe in providing a working environment which recognises individuals’ differing needs, therefore encouraging a work/life blend is key to us.
