Service Manager – Housing Options

About The Job

• Salary: £41,771 – £46,142 per annum (Grade 9)
• Annual leave: 30 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Hours: Permanent, Full-time (37 hours)
• Location: Based at the County Hall offices in Taunton or Bridgwater House in Bridgwater
• Hybrid working: Flexible working arrangements to support work-life balance

Regretfully, we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role. We can only proceed with candidates who already have the right to work in the UK without the need for visa sponsorship.

What will I be doing?

As a Service Manager for Housing Options, you’ll lead our dedicated teams to ensure the consistent and effective delivery of statutory homelessness and rehousing duties across Somerset. This is a pivotal role at the heart of our frontline housing service, where you’ll provide strong operational leadership and act as the key point of escalation for complex, high‑risk and multi‑agency cases.

Your day-to-day work will involve:

• Providing strong operational leadership to the Housing Options teams, ensuring effective workload management, supervision and performance.
• Handling escalations for the most complex and high‑risk cases, ensuring robust and lawful decision‑making in line with the statutory review process.
• Driving performance, quality and compliance through KPIs, audits and continuous improvement.
• Building effective relationships with partners and representing the service at key multi‑agency forums.
• Leading service development and improvement, contributing to policy, process and best‑practice changes.

What kind of experience or qualifications do I need?

• In‑depth knowledge of homelessness legislation, including Housing Act 1996, Homelessness Act 2002, HRA 2017, Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the Suitability Order.
• Significant experience delivering statutory homelessness and housing options services in a high‑pressure operational environment.
• Demonstrable experience managing complex and high‑risk casework, including MAPPA, MARAC, domestic abuse, safeguarding and dangerous offenders, with the ability to lead lawful and defensible decision‑making.
• Strong leadership skills, with experience supervising and developing staff, managing workload pressures and ensuring consistent, high‑quality service delivery.
• High‑level problem‑solving, negotiation and conflict‑resolution skills, particularly in high‑risk or contentious situations.

What’s in it for me?

• We promote a healthy work‑life balance and offer flexible working arrangements wherever possible, including working from home.
• Generous annual leave allowance, with the opportunity to purchase additional leave.
• Staff discounts in gyms.
• Employee Assistance for the times you may need some support and a variety of employee wellbeing services.
• Auto enrolment onto our generous Pension Scheme and optional pension enhancement through our Additional Voluntary Contribution scheme.
• A Flexible Benefits Scheme via salary sacrifice to obtain a cycle for work and health screenings.
• My Staff Shop offering discounts in shops, online shopping, restaurants, cinema tickets, insurance benefits and more.

DBS information

This post requires a criminal background check via the Disclosure procedure.

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