Housing Allocations Officer

Number of Vacancies:
1

Time Type:
Full time

Worker Type:
Regular

Proposed Interview Date:
Monday, November 16, 2026

Hours of Work:
37

Hiring Manager:
Helen Clarke

Contact Number:
01482 615089

Job Description Summary:
This is a Full Time Permanent Position

Interviews will take place week commencing 16 November 2026

ROLE AND PURPOSE

The Housing Allocations Officer will deliver a high quality and empathetic housing allocations service to customers, ensuring that the customer’s experience of the service is at the heart of all they do and that the tenancies created are as sustainable as possible.

They will advertise, allocate and let available homes efficiently and fairly in order to make best use of scarce housing stock and minimise rent loss to the authority. They will make independent decisions on complex matters in accordance with legislation and internal policies and procedures and provide guidance to Housing Allocations Agents as required.

The Housing Access Service is a multi-disciplinary service which is the front door service to access housing in the city. It provides a comprehensive housing advice and options service designed to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping, help customers find realistic and sustainable housing solutions which meet their needs from a range of options and allocate available council homes in a timely way.
PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:
1. Provides a professional, empathetic and high-quality service in response to customers approaching the service for advice and assistance which may be in person, over the phone, in writing or via IT systems. This will include dealing with enquiries that the Housing Allocations Agents need to escalate.

2. Allocates and lets available council properties to applicants efficiently and in accordance with the Council’s Allocations Policy and associated procedures, holding a personal caseload to follow through. This includes, but is not limited to, making decisions on whether a household is eligible for a property, matching applicants to properties, liaising with internal colleagues as appropriate for adapted and sheltered properties, carrying out interviews, checks and accompanied viewings (selling the potential of a property), sign ups, visits to empty properties (if necessary) before the allocations and advertising process starts, making formal offers and dealing with refusals or withdrawing offers in accordance with policy and explaining the implications of these and any appeal rights to the customer. This will require carrying work out in a range of settings including council offices, empty properties, customers’ homes or community settings.

3. Produces timely, professional and detailed property advertisements ensuring that the information they contain is accurate and that there is a good selection of photographs to help customers when choosing their bids and to minimise refusals, and avoid time and resources being wasted further down the line.

4. Ensures that tenancies created are as sustainable as possible by ensuring that pre-tenancy work identifies any issues and potential mitigating actions such as links in with ongoing tenancy support, benefit maximisation advice and assistance and arranging furniture packages within agreed protocols.

5. Maintains an expert knowledge of relevant legislation, policies, procedures and trends in order to make independent decisions on the more complex issues that come through the Allocations Team. These may include (but are not limited to) supporting the Housing Allocations Agents with their decision making, making decisions to withdraw offers, to remove priority/direct let awards, to withdraw properties from advert, to award direct lets to enable property swaps to better meet a customer’s need or make best use of stock and to advertise outside of the normal eligibility rules.

6. Administers their workload efficiently ensuring accurate and professional information is recorded on systems as appropriate. Collates statistics where required regarding team activity to feed into performance management activity and ensures that the required information is fed back to government via CORE (lettings information) and HCLIC (homelessness).

7. Prioritises their own caseload and also collaborates with their team to identify pressure points and agree and contribute to team priorities, to meet the demands of the service and ensure targets are met.

8. Liaises with the Housing Investment Team and the Council’s contractors within agreed protocols to ensure that empty properties can be relet swiftly to minimise rent loss to the council. Negotiates and agrees priorities for property returns for those in temporary accommodation or otherwise particularly urgent housing need situations.

9. Attends case conferences and represents the team at multi-agency meetings and events as required.

10. Mentors new starters to the service as deemed appropriate.

11. To promote and safeguard the welfare of children, young people and/or vulnerable adults.

12. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and associated legislation places responsibilities for health and safety on Hull City Council, as your employer and you as an employee of the council. In addition to the Councils overall duties, the post holder has personal responsibility for their own health, safety and wellbeing and that of other employees; additional and more specific responsibilities are identified in the Council’s Corporate H&S policy.

NC4718.Housing Allocations Officer.docx

Compensation Grades:
GRADES 6.

Pay Ranges:
£30,515.00 - £33,119.00

Job Classifications:
2- Basic with BPSS - (Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)), 3- Not Politically Restricted - Designated As Not Politically Sensitive (Politically Restricted Posts), Casual - (Travel Allowance Policy), No - (Childcare Disqualification Requirement), No - (Statutory Post)

Benefits of Working of Hull City Council:
- A competitive salary
- An excellent pension through the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
- Initially 23 days annual leave depending on length of service. You will also get eight public holidays per year, and three additional days off, one in May/August and one during the Christmas/New year period
- Career development and learning experiences from a range of training courses and learning methods
- Supportive and forward-thinking culture
- Great career development opportunities

Please ensure that you complete and submit your application by midnight prior to the closing date. Please ensure that your application demonstrates how you meet the essential criteria against the person specification as listed in the job description.

We are committed to increasing the diversity, equality, and inclusion within our workforce to represent the people we serve and build an environment in which everyone can feel like they belong. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.

We adopt a ‘name blind’ approach to shortlisting. Recruiting managers will not have access to personal information, including your name and contact details, until a shortlisting decision has been made. Equality monitoring information is not accessible by recruiting managers at any stage.

We reserve the right to amend the dates associated with this advert, which may include closing the advert early where required.

The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.

Online searches, including social media, may be carried out as part of the recruitment process.