A day in the life of a Housing Officer

We caught up with Kimberley to find out what one of our Housing Officers gets up to in a typical day …

If I’m in the office, I like to start my day with a cup of tea!

Then I check my emails and messages to find out what the day might have in store for me!

As I’m out and about a lot, it’s often better for residents to get in touch via our Customer Service team, who can log repairs and urgent issues. When I’m back in the office I go through the messages they send me and get back to people, working with others to solve a big variety of queries.

After this, I will go over any paperwork that I have completed whilst visiting residents. I don’t actually do estate inspections (we have an estates team who do), but whilst I’m out I take note of things that require attention on my estates, like checking out bin stores to make sure that the residents are keeping them clean and tidy.

During the day, I get a huge variety of queries from residents; anything from issues with parking, complaints about communal doors being left open to noise nuisance and worries about anti- social behaviour.

When I’m out of the office, my day will usually involve pre-arranged appointments where I visit residents for things like viewings or sign ups, Fixed Term Tenancy Reviews or to discuss issues around anti-social behaviour.

Sometime I also attend meetings with Local Authorities, such as Milton Keynes Council where police, social services, mental health teams and other landlords get together.

I love the variety of my job, in the office some days and then out and about meeting new people.

I also really enjoy the colleagues that I work with because not only do they help me with knowing what to do with work situations, but we also have great discussions in the office!

Memorable parts of my job are where people are so happy to be receiving a home to live in. In Milton Keynes, the only people on the housing list are Homeless people, so when you show them around a property, they are so happy to be getting somewhere permanent to live. In the weeks leading up to Christmas 2018, I was able to give 3 families houses and 4 single people flats. The smiles on these people’s faces were huge. One lady even said to me “thank you so much, you don’t know what this means to me”.

When I’m not at work I like to eat, walk and laugh. My husband and I like to get to as many comedy shows as possible so go to a comedy club in Biggleswade where the likes of Henning Venn, Zoe Lyons, Joel Dommet do their warm up gigs.