At Birmingham City Council, we are on a journey to become the best in class. We are determined to make Birmingham a fair and thriving city where all citizens can achieve their potential and share in the city’s success. Birmingham is a city with enormous opportunity and boundless potential. It is the most ethnically and culturally diverse city outside London, which brings with it a wealth of creativity, entrepreneurship, talent and energy. We are one of the youngest cities in Europe and the almost 50% of our residents are under 30 years of age and represent a bright future for the city and for the region.

People’s expectations are increasing, they expect their services to be reliable and joined up around their needs. They expect a greater level of involvement in decisions that affect their lives, and this mirrors government expectations of us. Many of our challenges stem from historic and structural inequalities within our society and economy, and the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and compounded the difficulties our most vulnerable citizens face in their daily lives. Birmingham City Council are focused on doing our part to ‘level up;’ we want to support people to reach their full potential, reducing the pressure on cost and provision of public services.

The City Housing Directorate have faced substantial challenge over the last decade. We have had to manage steeply declining resources, alongside a sharp rise in demand for our services. The implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act (2017), Rough Sleeping Strategy (2018) and the consequences of the pandemic have forced the Housing Solutions and Support Service to entirely change our response to those using our services. We also continue to engage in a whole service Housing Transformation programme where we seek to address issues within the organisation, including financial management, service performance, and organisational culture.

The Assistant Director role is a key leader within the City Housing Directorate, overseeing the Housing Solutions and Support Service which is one of the key services supporting some of the most vulnerable groups within our community. This role is instrumental in delivering the Levelling Up agenda through the mobilisation of a full Housing Solutions and Support redesign. The post has historically delivered traditional Housing Options services, but we aim to achieve our aspirations through an innovative and creative leader, who has high expectations of the team and really wants to help us to progress on our journey to become the best in class.

We want to see applications from strategic thinkers who can build excellent partnerships both internally and externally. It is important that the successful candidate is resilient and can support large teams through change. As a Council, we want our services to stand out and be something that the citizens of Birmingham can be proud of and a provision that they can turn to and feel confident that they will receive a good service when facing hardship. Any successful applicant should have Birmingham’s citizens at the heart of everything that they do and should be able to drive this message forward to teams, across a vast service area. The Housing Solutions and Support Service are in the middle of a significant period of transition, overall, we want a strong leader to steady the ship and guide teams through the process with a clear vision and understanding of our strategic approach.

For a confidential conversation with our recruitment partners GatenbySanderson, please contact Melissa Stewart at  melissa.stewart@gatenbysanderson.com, Charlotte Croffie on 07551 566195 or Simon Wing on 0207 426 3976.

To apply please visit: https://www.gatenbysanderson.com/job/GSe82502/Assistant-Director-of-Housing-Solutions-and-Support-Services/