Revenues and Benefits Professional

Benefits and Housing Needs Officer Hackney Contract £21.31 per hour Our client is looking for an experienced Benefits and Housing Needs Officer. 1) To formally respond to all stage 1 assigned casework / follow-ups, Members Enquiries, MP enquiries, Mayor & Cabinet Enquiries and Freedom of information requests within the standard KPI turnaround time and to occasionally assist the exploratory enquiries of the Business Improvement & Complaints Team (BACT) with stage 2 escalated complaint investigations and to complete Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) investigation outcome action points. 2) To have strong verbal and adept written communication skills during casework engagement with; customers, staff colleagues and partners of the Council and a successful track record of positively de-escalating and settling matters during challenging conversations with various vulnerable customer groups and appointed legal/voluntary community based advocates. 3) Must have a strong understanding of the key challenges facing local and national government in the professional field of benefits, Council tax reduction scheme and all statutory obligations applicable under Part 7 (Homelessness) & Part 6 (Allocations) of the Housing Act 1996. 4) Must have a minimum of at least 5 years experience of working in Local Government and/or any other government / political organisation. 5) To efficiently track, monitor and prioritise business critical casework responses and FOI’s by order of deadline or by instructions from line management or higher. 6) To implement robust measures of casework management / investigation methods to ensure all lines of enquiries are sufficiently explored, managing expectations and offering the most up to date deliverable solutions to successfully resolve formal disputes and all other forms of casework. 7) To work across all business areas of the service in order to access and to compile essential information in order to fully respond to all assigned casework. 8) To promote a 'one council' approach and to share knowledge of best practices with team colleagues and wider service to help the service improve and help in the implementation of any pertinent lessons learned through our day-to-day work. 9) To mitigate financial risks and reputational damage to the service in all casework received, and to determine whether or not that the service is at fault within the disputed matter and if fault is found, then the post holder must weigh up all pragmatic resolution options available to sufficiently resolve formal disputes and all other forms of casework on first response. 10) To identify and mitigate all risks related to safeguarding, by exhaustively exploring and following through to completion all necessary action points to ensure no member of the public and/or staff colleagues are at risk of danger or harm at any time. 11) To assist the team colleagues to determine casework ownership within the service or to another directorate within the Council. In addition to working in collaboration with other directorates to successfully deliver robust joint casework responses. 12) To contribute toward the Complaints team's overall efforts to meet the services strategic and performance objectives and corporate council-wide plans. 13) To competently update all casework related software business systems / customer record databases with any insightful observations and/or conclusive outcomes to ensure the overall quality of data held is kept to a high standard of integrity at all times. 14) To strictly adhere to the statutory regulations under GDPR, whilst ensuring that procedure and policy guidelines are compliantly met in relation to all casework investigations and formal responses. 15) Undertake additional duties that may arise from time to time commensurate with the grade of the post and the ability to work at any location within the borough of Hackney, including weekends if required. PLEASE ONLY apply if you have the necessary skills, experience and expertise. The first part of our recruitment process is to send your CV. Should you be short listed Colbern Limited will contact you within 5 days or we may contact you about other job opportunities. Colbern Limited along with our clients are an equal opportunities employer