Location
London Borough of Waltham Forest

Hours
Full Time - 36 hours per week

Salary
PO8 £59,511 - £62,766

About the Role
This role will lead and develop an exceptional complaints and enquiries service, prioritising customer experience and ensuring compliance with the Housing Ombudsman’s Code. You will design and implement a continuous service improvement framework, using resident insight data and sector good practice to deliver insight-driven improvements and ensure operational services meet regulatory requirements. The post-holder will identify systemic issues and emerging trends, work with service leaders to apply learning, and implement service improvements to enhance the customer experience.

Ultimately, this role aims to build a strong ‘resident first’ culture, ensuring residents are supported when making complaints and that positive resolutions are reached.

Key responsibilities include building an effective Housing Complaints and Improvement Service, managing complaints in line with the Housing Ombudsman Service Complaint Handling Code, overseeing responses to Housing Ombudsman orders, leading service improvement projects, developing a comprehensive customer insight framework, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, analysing complaints to identify patterns and systemic issues, supporting a resident-centric culture, and encouraging ownership of complaint resolution across teams.

Experience
- Managing within a complex or high volume complaints handling environment or equivalent.
- In-depth understanding of complaints management frameworks and best practices.
- Managing improvement projects within time, budget, and quality constraints in a large organisation.
- Experience working within housing services.
- Interpreting and applying complex legislation and regulations.
- Good understanding of the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
- Familiarity with relevant regulatory requirements.
- Strong analytical skills for trend identification, root cause analysis, and driving continuous improvement.
- Report writing and communication skills for diverse audiences.
- Presenting complex statistical data accessibly.
- Budget planning and management.
- Strong people leadership skills.
- Influencing, persuading, and negotiating to achieve positive outcomes.
- Exceptional verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills.
- High levels of personal resilience and integrity.
- Excellent IT skills, especially MS Office and MS Excel.

About you
You will be an ambassador for the Council, demonstrating professionalism and commitment to excellent customer service. You will foster a resident-centric culture and encourage ownership of complaint resolution among employees.

Qualifications
- Educated to degree standard or equivalent, or qualified through experience.
- Level 4 Housing Qualification is desirable, or willingness to work towards it if not already held.