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Benefits Assessment Officer – Housing

Posting date:	30 May 2024
Salary:	£20.77 per hour
Additional salary information:	per hour PAYE
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	28 June 2024
Location:	Northampton, NN1 1ED
Company:	Triumph Consultants Ltd
Job type:	Temporary
Job reference:	WNC (HQ) 18210

Summary

What's involved with this role:

Interim Benefits Assessment Officer – Housing

Reference no: WNC (HQ) 18210

Pay Rate: £20.77 per hour PAYE

Hours per week: 37 Monday – Friday, normal working hours

Role Length: This opening assignment is 3 months

City: Northampton

Basic DBS disclosure is listed as a requirement for this role

The purpose of the role is to administer Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction new claims and change in circumstances efficiently and promptly to minimise fraud and overpayments and to maximise subsidy income to the Council, in accordance with government legislation, and corporate priorities.

Interpreting and keeping up to date on complex legislation to assess and make necessary decisions on all types of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction applications including changes in circumstances. This must be done within required timescales including compiling all the necessary information to accurately calculate entitlement. This includes specialised cases such as self-employed, students and persons from abroad and ensuring notifications of entitlement are issued correctly and are legally compliant.

Key responsibilities:

Receive and action correspondence in respect of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction from customers, landlords, Rent Service, DWP and other stakeholders including replying to requests for further information, statements of reasons, reconsiderations, and requests for backdated benefit.
Provide a high quality and customer focused service giving advice on Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction, Universal Credit and wider Welfare Benefits and Welfare Reform through face to face interviews, telephone, electronic channels and home visits as required.
Communicate and liaise with landlords, Debt and Welfare Benefit team, Housing, Revenues, the Rent Service, DWP including Universal Credit Service Centre and other stakeholders to ensure entitlement is correct, vulnerable clients are supported and to maximise income.
Ensure that overpayments are correctly identified and categorised in accordance with legislation and to maximise the subsidy income to the Council.
Prioritise and manage own workloads to ensure objectives and targets are achieved and customer requirements are met and to identify possible fraudulent cases, refer to Corporate Fraud team and provide information and evidence as required.
Accurately maintain Council Tax records where changes are identified through Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction applications to ensure systems are aligned.
To comply with new and existing Revenues and Benefits legislation and working practises, including keeping up to date with the contents of the procedure manual.
To undertake any other duties that can reasonably be expected of the role and the level of responsibility.



NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via jobs@tclrec.com by quoting the job reference and job title exactly.

To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would suggest that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, rather than as a PDF

If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than entertaining umbrella pay terms, we do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity.

Due to the number of CVs being sent to us under current market conditions, we cannot, unfortunately, respond to all applications. If, therefore, you have not heard from us within 3 days please make a working assumption that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. We will, however, be very happy to receive future applications from you for other roles.

Please quote the Job Title & Vacancy Reference No. in your application, or we will be unable to match your CV to the role being applied for.


Other “Essential Requirements” – Please check to ensure that your CV addresses the following items:

Unless the DBS requirement stated above is for a Basic Disclosure, your DBS must be either through us or be accompanied by a subscription to the DBS updating service.

Qualifications:

English and Maths GCSE grade C or above / Proven literacy and numeracy skills.



Experience:

Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role, or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
Demonstrate ability to understand, interpret and explain complicated government legislation and the ability to keep up to date with frequent legislative and procedural changes.
Experience of assessing claims for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction and knowledge of welfare benefits.
Demonstrable knowledge and experience of Capita or Northgate Revenues and Benefits systems.
Experience of assessing claims for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction and knowledge of welfare benefits.
Knowledge of all tenure types of new claims such as SEA, TA, Council Properties.
Knowledge of all areas of work such as new claims, changes, VEP, ATLAS, UCDS.
Knowledge of all types of claims such as self-employed, PFA, students.
In depth benefit assessment knowledge.



Skills & Abilities:

Good verbal and written communication skills with the ability to support and negotiate with customers, landlords and stakeholders in a calm, sensitive way in difficult situations.
Proven ability to work on own initiative with the minimum of supervision and to use own discretion and judgment.
Proven ability to prioritise large volumes of complex work to meet tight deadlines and targets while having regard to urgent more vulnerable cases and the need to be accurate
Works accurately with a high attention to detail
Proven ability to work as an effective, flexible member of a team.
Strong IT skills including Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).





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Job Ref: WNC (HQ) 18210


Anticipated Length of Assignment: Unless otherwise stated (we do carry the occasional permanent vacancy) all of our roles are technically temporary, though opening assignments can be and often are, extended by clients on a longer term basis and can sometimes become permanent.

Please do try to resist contacting us with requests for progress updates.

We really do read every CV sent to us. All applications will be acknowledged by a human, not a robot, provided the job remains live and provided your CV meets the “Essential Requirements” listed.

Please note that we do our level best to take down ads as soon as roles have been filled. We are not in the business of harvesting CVs.

Important: We will interpret your application as being permission to submit your CV to this role (with the right to represent you) unless you advise us to the contrary.