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20 October 2021
Help shape the 30-year plan for council homes.
7 October 2021
Licensing Scheme leads to improvements to private rented housing standards.
3 September 2021
Residents are one step closer to moving into Castle Park View, the tallest residential block in Bristol, with the completion of the benchmark affordable home.
24 August 2021
A section of Muller Road will not be closed after vehicle dwellers moved off land that is due to be developed for social housing.
Lettings Team Leader
- £32,910 to £34,728
- Full time
- Permanent
- Based at 100 Temple Street, Redcliffe, Bristol BS1 6AN
As the destination employer in 2022, an exciting opportunity has become available to join Bristol City Council and the Lettings Team.
You will be making a big impact, with the responsibility for leading the lettings team in finding the future homes for our Citizens. With 28,000 properties we are focused on improving their lives underpinned by excellent customer care and equality.
Are you someone who can balance working in a performance driven environment whilst boosting staff morale?
If so, this role could be for you. You will have the compassion needed to work within complex and challenging situations, coupled with the ability to inspire your team to think, lead, and influence our approach in a key role delivering our aims to reduce empty homes within Bristol.
As a confident negotiator you will build and maintain relationships with stakeholders' partners and contractors. You will be a role model for staff and help coach them to achieve their own professional aspirations, whilst embedding the values and behaviours of our organisation. In return you will be supported by a friendly and supportive management team, with focus on being the best social landlord in the South West.
Previous experience of delivering in tenancy and estate management services, voids, lettings, sign ups, including legal processes is essential. With a working knowledge of diverse communities and an awareness of welfare provision and benefits for residents, you will be able to demonstrate solid technical knowledge of tenancy law, tenancy agreements, and different tenure types. Supported housing experience would be advantageous coupled with a property or housing related qualification.
At Bristol City Council, we go that extra mile for our people; we offer a work environment which is fast moving and supportive, giving you the chance to use your skills and develop new ones within a high-profile organisation. For the majority of our roles hybrid working arrangements are available, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, mixing both home and office working.
Join us and you will receive an excellent rewards package including flexible working and flexitime, membership of the Local Government Pension scheme, and a generous annual leave allowance. In addition, you will be working in a supportive environment where you will have the chance to make Bristol a better place and contribute to its future.
Closing date: Wednesday 16 February 2022 before midnight
For further information e-mail, our Lettings manager: joanne.marchant@bristol.gov.uk
Specifications
Length at current job: 3 months.
Tell me a little about your position and what you do on a day-to-day basis. Who are your customers and your co-workers? Do you work in a team environment or independently?
The purpose of my role is to monitor and report on complaint handling performance within Housing & Landlord Services (H&LS), to offer guidance, training and insight, to remind officers about impending target dates and chase up overdue responses. I am also responsible for ensuring we comply with legislation and for completing and publishing our annual self-assessment.
My customers are the officers who handle complaints within H&LS – I try to make myself available to offer advice or help them with technical issues whenever necessary. They are often juggling heavy workloads and could probably do without my nudging/nagging, but fortunately most of them understand that I’m trying to help them and ultimately trying to improve the resident experience.
I am part of the Business Innovation team, where there are two other Senior Business Information Analysts, but I do work largely independently on a day-to-day basis. The people who I would mostly consider my co-workers are actually the Customer Relations Team, as they are the people who I regularly speak to for advice relating to complaints and enquiries, to request changes to cases and collaborate with about training and process improvements.
What keeps you motivated to go to work each day? What is your proudest accomplishment?
The desire to actually bring about tangible change, both for the residents who submit complaints, but also for our officers who are handling complaints. Seeing the figures slowly improve as the months go by is really motivating.
I like that I have the freedom to make the role what I want it to be. I am not micro-managed at all and am trusted to use my experience and instincts to dig out the insightful information, to look for trends and focus on what I feel is most important in the here and now. I also love the fact that it’s allowed me to start building relationships with people across all of the operational services in Housing.
My proudest accomplishment is mastering the reporting side of the iCasework system with no training, such that I am able to produce detailed and insightful reports for the various Housing and Landlord service areas.
Are there any challenges in your job? If so, how do you handle them?
The biggest challenge to date has been the lack of understanding of using the iCasework system, for both myself and the officers handling complaints. I’ve tackled that by screen-sharing and muddling through the issues with officers, learning as I go and helping others to learn too. I’m in the process of creating a suite of training products for H&LS, so going forward this challenge should be greatly reduced.
How have your past experiences prepared you for this job? How have you evolved in your current role and where do you hope to go next?
I’ve spent over 30 years working in law, starting as a typist in Bristol County Court back in 1988 and becoming a legal business analyst in 2008. I’ve also dabbled in art (acrylics historically but now watercolours) and ran a reasonably successful YouTube channel for a few years. My experience working with complex formulae and pivot tables in Excel, gained over the years, have helped.
What’s probably been most helpful is something pretty simple that we can all relate to, which is that I am a customer – we all are. I try to always have the perspective of: if I was this resident, what would I want from the Council? How would I want to be treated and communicated with? What would be likely to make me more upset when I’ve already complained?
I am at the point in my career where I’m no longer striving for progression – I just want to finish most days feeling like I made a difference. Job satisfaction has become far more important to me than how much I earn or what my job title is.
What advice would you give someone who is seeking the same line of work?
My advice for someone who wanted to get into performance analysis would be to make sure that you actually truly care about getting to the root cause of things – providing really insightful analysis requires a determination to dig through data (quantitative and qualitative) in a variety of ways… be open minded, be prepared to test each and every hypothesis and be prepared to present data in various different ways.
If you’re looking to get into the world of complaints or customer service, the ability to look at things from the perspective of the residents is what I find most important in my role
Where do you hope to go with this job, or in your career in general?
"I am at the point in my career where I'm no longer striving for progression, I just want to finish most days feeling like I made a difference. Job satisfaction has become far more important to me than how much I earn or what my job title is".
Length at current job: 2 years.
Tell me a little about your position and what you do on a day-to-day basis. Who are your customers and your co-workers? Do you work in a team environment or independently?
I am an IT project manager in the Business Innovation unit. My role is split between managing IT projects and delivering change that benefit Housing & Landlord Services and supporting operational teams with various IT requests. I have recently been asked to join the MFT IT Programme to lead on the Digital services and data project.
Whilst my immediate 'customers' are colleagues in the Housing and Landlord Service, tenants are never far behind. My view is that by helping colleagues to access the tools that they need, they are able to do their job more effectively and this has to benefit residents.
I have recently been allocated to the Moving Forward Together Programme team, which is a team made of 4 other project manager, 5 business analysts and a programme manager. Like many other teams, we work remotely.
What keeps you motivated to go to work each day? What is your proudest accomplishment?
The assurance that what I do makes a difference. "If we are to better the future, we must disturb the present" (Catherine Booth). Realising our vision takes each one of us playing our part, that includes me.
I also like the variety of my job. No one project is the same. Each one is an opportunity to get to meet and work with new people and for me to learn something new.
My proudest accomplishment is being part of the long-awaited deployment of 4G devices to colleagues. It only took 4 years of persistence to get to this point, but I will really be happy when IT has deployed all of the devices ordered!
Are there any challenges in your job? If so, how do you handle them?
Project management is a bit like a hurdle race. If you don't like problem solving, then you may want to reconsider your options. I like to discuss challenges with colleagues, the diversity of point of views and experiences helps me consider different options.
How have your past experiences prepared you for this job? How have you evolved in your current role and where do you hope to go next?
My education had nothing to do with project management - I studied French. However, I took the opportunity to do a part-time HNC in Housing and have more recently been on the Stepping Up programme. If anything, the various frontline jobs I did before helped me see that my heart was into business improvement and change.
Most of my career has been in here: admin support with Pest Control, rent collector, voids officer and policy and projects officer.
I would say that I have grown into a project manager. Since I initially took on this role as a secondment opportunity, I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge and practice in 'formal' project management, but also extended my network within the organisation.
I would like to continue to improve on my project management skills but also would like to venture into business strategy.
What advice would you give someone who is seeking the same line of work?
I would encourage them to volunteer when their manager is asking to help with some project work (IT or not). It is always a really good way to start. Secondment opportunities are a really good way to put a foot in the door and see if it is for you.
What do you like best about your job?
"Variety. Not one project is the same. Each one is an opportunity to get to meet and work with new people and for me to learn something new".
Length at current job: 7 years.
Tell us a little about your position and what you do on a day-to-day basis. Who are your customers and your co-workers? Do you work in a team environment or independently?
I am an IT project manager in the Business Innovation unit. My role is split between managing IT projects and delivering changes that benefit Housing & Landlord Services and supporting operational teams with various IT requests. I have recently been asked to join the Moving Forward Together IT Programme to lead on the digital services and data project.
Whilst my immediate 'customers' are colleagues in the Housing and Landlord Service, tenants are never far behind. My view is that by helping colleagues to access the tools that they need, they are able to do their job more effectively and this has to benefit residents.
I have recently been allocated to the Moving Forward Together Programme team, which is a team made of four other project manager, five business analysts and a programme manager. Like many other teams, we work remotely.
What keeps you motivated to go to work each day? What is your proudest accomplishment?
The assurance that what I do makes a difference. "If we are to better the future, we must disturb the present" (Catherine Booth). Realising our vision takes each one of us playing our part, that includes me.
I also like the variety of my job. No one project is the same. Each one is an opportunity to get to meet and work with new people and for me to learn something new.
My proudest accomplishment is being part of the long-awaited deployment of 4G devices to colleagues. It only took four years of persistence to get to this point, but I will really be happy when IT has deployed all of the devices ordered!
Are there any challenges in your job? If so, how do you handle them?
Project management is a bit like a hurdle race. If you don't like problem solving, then you may want to reconsider your options. I like to discuss challenges with colleagues, the diversity of point of views and experiences helps me consider different options.
How have your past experiences prepared you for this job? How have you evolved in your current role and where do you hope to go next?
My education had nothing to do with project management - I studied French. However, I took the opportunity to do a part-time HNC in Housing and have more recently been on the Stepping Up programme. If anything, the various frontline jobs I did before helped me see that my heart was in business improvement and change.
Most of my career has been in here: admin support with pest control, rent collector, voids officer and policy and projects officer.
I would say that I have grown into a project manager. Since I initially took on this role as a secondment opportunity, I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge and practice in 'formal' project management, but also extended my network within the organisation.
I would like to continue to improve on my project management skills but also would like to venture into business strategy.
What advice would you give someone who is seeking the same line of work?
I would encourage them to volunteer when their manager is asking to help with some project work (IT or not). It is always a really good way to start. Secondment opportunities are a really good way to put a foot in the door and see if it is for you.
What keeps you motivated to go to work each day?
"Knowing that my work is contributing to improving the conditions of housing in the private rented sector and the positive impact of this. I also enjoy working with my colleagues who are dedicated, hard-working and fun to work with."
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