Leasehold & Right to Buy Officer

To provide a high-quality service to the leaseholders, shared ownership and freehold customers, ensuring that they are managed in accordance with the terms of their leases and deeds, legislation, regulation and best practice. To ensure residents receive a quality, helpful, responsive and value for money service. To maximise income to the business ensuring leaseholders and other customers contribute fully to their lease or contract obligations. You will be responsible for all aspects of leasehold management, including Right to Buy and shared ownership sales and any subsequent re-sale on the open market. You will be required to assist in the calculation, communicate and collect service charges and other associated costs as per the lease agreement. You will also be required to understand and enforce the terms of the lease to assist both the leaseholder and Portsmouth Homes as the landlord.



Skills:

You will need to:

• Demonstrate a sound working knowledge of legislation governing local authority leasehold management and the Right to Buy, including relevant housing, landlord and tenant, and service charge legislation, with the ability to keep this knowledge up to date and apply it in a local authority context.

• Ensure compliance with Consumer Standards, regulatory requirements, and landlord obligations, including responding to challenge and scrutiny via the First Tier Tribunal and other regulatory bodies.

• Be an assertive and resilient person, who has the ability to deliver excellent customer service and to tailor delivery to the customers' individual needs.

• Be able to use your initiative, applying PLAN, and have the ability to make informed and appropriate decisions. This ability is especially relevant when dealing with high level complaints and Councillor enquiries.

• Have the ability to: understand and manipulate complicated numerical data used to calculate service charges, and precisely collate and determine leaseholder income and expenditure, at times without their full co-operation, to recoup arrears and sustain payments.

• Have the ability to research, understand, interpret and relay complex legislation in regard to leasehold legislation and reforms.

• Be able to work well under pressure, manage a diverse workload and meet crucial, legislative deadlines.

• Be able to apply the use of independent professional judgement when managing complex cases, determining appropriate enforcement action, and making decisions with financial and legal implications for the Council.

• Have an independent work ethic and the ability to work when required.

• Have excellent IT skills (in particular Excel, Word, Outlook and mainframe applications such as Northgate).

• Possess a full driving licence (and ideally have access to own vehicle with business insurance). Some amount of time will be spent visiting leaseholders at their homes not necessarily in the Portsmouth area.