Portsmouth is a modern city transforming to meet the needs of the 21^st Century and an exciting place to live and work with the local authority is at its heart. Being one of the most densely populated parts of the country outside of London, housing is a prominent issue for the 200,000+ residents who live here.

The Housing, Neighbourhoods and Building Services Directorate is delivering a range of front-line services, including waste management, building maintenance and housing services.

The Housing Needs, Advice and Support service (previously called Housing Options) is the gateway to all social housing within the city and the Portsmouth City Council-owned properties in the Havant area.

The service deals with a range of housing issues, giving advice to customers, working to prevent or relieve homelessness, making assessments in accordance with the homelessness legislation and assessing housing and support needs in line with the city council’s Allocation Scheme.

This is an exciting time for the team which is growing and working hard to deliver an excellent service. The team are currently reviewing the performance of the service and will soon begin work to create the new combined Homelessness and Rough Sleeping strategy which will be the blueprint for the next five years.

Our service is designed and managed with our customers at the heart of our thinking, we strive to prevent homelessness and when we cannot prevent homelessness to provide the right accommodation with appropriate support for customers.

This post will lead a dedicated team and will be the lead officer for not only homelessness services but also for our commissioned housing and rough sleeping pathways.

Housing Need, Advice and Support sits within the Housing Need and Supply service, ensuring a direct link between housing need and the delivery of housing solutions, this role will be pivotal in understanding need and working to ensure the city has the right housing and support models for our residents.

Candidates will have an excellent understanding of Part VI and Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 and will likely have had experience working under the legislative scheme introduced by the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. An understanding of the opportunities and challenges provided by the homeless legislation will aid the successful candidate to make improvements to internal policies and processes, with the aim of preventing homelessness more often and helping more people find the housing they need.

Our service benefits from a dedicated and committed team and we consider it essential that the candidate be able to demonstrate that they can support and continue to develop the empowering and positive culture which is in place.

You may be a manager of a housing needs team looking for a career move to work in a unitary authority and are ready to step up and work in a ‘city’ council. You may have worked in a housing needs service and work in a senior position but looking to connect the management experience with your front-line experience.

Working for a unitary local authority, the successful candidate will enjoy the benefits of being part of a collaborative and effective senior management team with access to a wide peer group across the full range of city council services including public health, adult social care and children’s social care. This provides a fantastic opportunity for joint working.

The Housing Need and Supply team provide housing pathways for both Adult and Children’s Social Care and this provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the development of these schemes ensuring that the city can provide accommodation for all its residents. Strong candidates are likely to have experience of working closely with a wide range of external partners and councillors.

You will also represent the service in peer relationships within Hampshire and with key government departments including DLUCH.

This is an excellent opportunity to lead a committed and hard-working team to deliver first class services for the people of Portsmouth. We pride ourselves on our commitment to our customers and on our ability to get things done. This role is pivotal in achieving good quality and continually improving services. If you feel that you have the skills, knowledge and experience for the role and would enjoy working in this exciting service then I look forward to hearing from you.

You will be someone who:

• Is an experienced senior manager with a proven track record of developing both new and highly skilled experienced staff.
• Has held a management and leadership position for at least five years. You are likely to be an experienced lead officer ready to take on the breadth of responsibility that this exciting role offers.
• Is able to quickly develop positive working relationships with colleagues across the council and partner organisation.
• Is an experienced people manager, with experience of leading and developing a team of front-line managers.
• Has a track record in providing housing services and can demonstrate an understanding of the housing issues facing Portsmouth.
• Can demonstrate, through examples, a track record of service improvement using an evidenced based approach that gets to, and deals with, the root causes (please include any experience of a systems thinking approach).
• Is emotionally resilient and able to support a team which is exposed to customer’s difficult circumstances.
• Has extensive experience of using initiative and judgement to problem solve and make decisions in a structured and transparent way to resolve complex issues, at both service level and in a multi-agency environment.
• Is a confident person who can clearly and effectively communicate both verbally and in writing. As a head of service typical communications are presentations to residents’ groups, investigating complaints, briefing senior managers and members.
• Works proactively and is able to remain motivated, working on your own initiative in coordinating multiple tasks.
• Is able to analyse data in order to understand the performance of the system.
• Has strong experience of the bidding process for grant funding, and ideally managing operational budgets of approximately £6 million.
• Is hard working and prepared to work occasionally outside of normal working hours to meet with stakeholders, service providers and customers.
• Has knowledge and experience in delivering homelessness, housing options and rough sleeping services with an understanding of the related legislation.
• Has practical or leadership experience of developing and implementing an effective, fair and flexible allocation scheme that reflects the needs of local residents and is able to demonstrate a sound knowledge of the local housing needs.