Head of Housing Management and Neighbourhood

Head of Housing Management and Neighbourhoods

We're looking for a proven leader to join Southampton City Council as the Head of Housing Management and Neighbourhoods. This is a rare opportunity to shape the future of a large and ambitious housing service, turning recovery into long-term improvement. You'll play a pivotal role in shaping services to deliver critical services for the residents of Southampton every day.

About the team

We're a key part of the Council's Residents' Services Directorate, which brings together housing, customer services and community support around a shared purpose: to make sure every resident has access to a safe, affordable and sustainable home, and to strengthen the communities that make Southampton a city of opportunity.

The Housing Management and Neighbourhoods team plays a crucial role within Housing's new commissioning model:

• Managing homes, tenancies and neighbourhoods across the city to meet agreed demand and standards.
• Working closely with colleagues in Strategy, Insight & Performance, Quality Homes and Housing Works, the team ensures that customer needs are clearly understood, work is prioritised effectively and delivered efficiently across the whole housing system.

About the role

As Head of Housing Management and Neighbourhoods, you'll be a member of the Housing Directorate Senior Leadership Team, responsible for delivering good-quality, compliant and value-for-money services that give customers, the Council and the Regulator confidence that housing is under control and improving, and that housing works as a joined-up system.

You'll set clear objectives and priorities, delegate delivery to managers and teams, and provide support to remove barriers when needed. Ensuring teams have a shared understanding of expectations, strategic goals, and the future direction of the service. Through your leadership approach you'll also ensure that managers and teams feel supported and are empowered with the tools and resources needed to succeed.

Key responsibilities include:

• Deliver high-quality services across Housing Management and Neighbourhoods that comply with regulatory standards, meet budgetary constraints and add value for tenants.
• Build strategies and plans to respond to change, embrace opportunities and manage risk. Using evidence, data and customer insight to make informed decisions.
• Ensure governance drives improvement, not just reporting and using your perspective as a senior leader to stay on top of delivery and drive an active approach to learning and improvement.
• Establish trusted relationships, partnerships and collaborate with leaders across the Council, other public sector bodies and tenants to scan the horizon, agree priorities and mutual strategy.
• Drive transformation and service improvement through strategic planning, innovation, and performance management. You will play a key part in improving the culture to empower staff to innovate, learn and improve outcomes, reducing siloed working and top-down firefighting
• Ensure services are safe, legally compliant and delivered with professionalism. And always ensure that the needs of tenants and residents guide priorities, design and delivery.

This is truly a fantastic leadership opportunity where everything you do will contribute to Southampton's vision to be a city of opportunity where everyone thrives through more equal, healthier, safer, growing and greener communities.

About you:

We're looking for an experienced and inspiring leader to shape and deliver modern, efficient housing services that meet the needs of our tenants and communities.

You will need:

• Proven senior leadership experience in the housing sector, with a track record of setting direction, driving performance, and developing high-performing teams.
• Strategic and commercial acumen to deliver compliant, value-for-money services and manage risk effectively.
• Credibility and influence to build trusted relationships with stakeholders, partners, and communities, and to lead collaboration across organisational boundaries.
• Expertise in transformation and service improvement, using data, insight, and innovation to deliver measurable outcomes.
• Strong governance and…