Housing Team Leader

We are looking for three enthusiastic Team Leaders to join our Housing Advice service and lead teams at the heart of Sheffield's approach to preventing homelessness.

This is an exciting time to join us. Our Housing Advice service has been redesigned around prevention, earlier intervention and better outcomes for Sheffield residents. The Team Leader roles provide operational leadership to frontline teams, with responsibility for quality, performance, staff development and ensuring our services are responsive, consistent and legally compliant

We are recruiting to three Team Leader positions:

Family Prevention Team Leader 37 hours per week, permanent

Leading our Family Prevention Team, you will oversee housing and homelessness prevention casework for households with children and households including a pregnant woman. The team works proactively with households to prevent homelessness at the earliest opportunity, exploring realistic housing options, developing personalised housing plans and working with internal and external partners to achieve sustainable outcomes, and work to prevent unnecessary temporary accommodation placements.

Adult Prevention Team Leader 37 hours per week, 12-month maternity cover

You will lead our Adult Prevention Team, supporting officers delivering statutory homelessness prevention and housing options work for adults at risk of homelessness. You will provide operational and technical oversight, helping staff navigate complex cases while ensuring good-quality, timely and legally sound decision-making.

Our existing prevention model includes early intervention, housing advice and options, personalised housing plans, statutory decision-making, liaison with council services and external partners, and work to prevent unnecessary temporary accommodation placements.

Community Prevention Team Leader 37 hours per week, permanent

This is a particularly exciting opportunity to lead our new Community Prevention Team and help establish a new approach to preventing homelessness earlier.

The team will work in communities with the highest levels of housing need, providing housing help before problems escalate to the point where a statutory homelessness duty is triggered. Working alongside statutory, voluntary and community organisations, the team will identify housing problems earlier, remove barriers to accessing help and strengthen local prevention and community resilience

The Community Prevention Team's work will include practical housing advice and short interventions, community-based prevention activity, partnership working and helping residents build longer-term housing stability. An important measure of its success will be resolving problems earlier and reducing avoidable escalation into statutory homelessness services and temporary accommodation

As a new service, the Team Leader will also have an opportunity to shape how the team develops, using information about demand, outcomes and learning to refine how community prevention operates in practice.

Whichever team you lead, you will have an important role in supporting staff to deliver excellent services to Sheffield residents.

You will:

• Lead, motivate, coach and develop frontline officers, taking a supportive and individual approach to supervision and development.
• Manage workloads and resources and ensure the team can respond effectively to demand.
• Monitor performance, casework quality, timeliness and outcomes and take action when improvements are needed.
• Provide guidance and oversight on complex cases and support sound, lawful decision-making.
• Ensure statutory duties, legislation, policies and procedures are applied consistently.
• Develop strong relationships with colleagues, partners and community organisations to improve outcomes for residents.
• Use customer feedback, performance information and learning to improve the service.
• Support staff through change and help embed new ways of working across Housing Advice.

We are looking for people who can combine effective leadership with a genuine commitment to preventing homelessness and providing high-quality services.

You should be able to demonstrate:

• The ability to manage, coach, motivate and develop staff.
• Strong operational judgement and the confidence to support staff with complex issues.
• An understanding of housing and homelessness legislation and the responsibilities of a local authority.
• The ability to manage performance and maintain high standards of quality and consistency.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to build effective relationships with partners.
• A strong customer focus and commitment to accessible, inclusive and person-centred services.
• The ability to work at pace, manage competing demands and respond positively to change.

This is an opportunity to join Housing Advice at a time when we are developing a much stronger focus on early intervention and prevention.

You will be part of a supportive management team working to reduce homelessness, lessen the need for temporary accommodation and make it easier for residents to get effective housing help at the right time.

There is a real opportunity to influence a developing service and help shape how we take housing advice and homelessness prevention out into Sheffield's communities.

Above all, we are looking for Team Leaders who care about their staff, are prepared to take responsibility for service quality and performance, and want to make a tangible difference to residents facing housing difficulties.

If that sounds like you, we would be pleased to hear from you.

We are investing in our workforce and are promoting opportunities to our under-represented groups. We value equality, diversity and inclusion and are focused on increasing the diversity of our workforce, particularly the number of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, Disabled and LGBTQ+ people, so that our teams reflect the communities in the city we serve.

It is a great time to join us and we welcome your application.

Under the Guaranteed Interview scheme, applicants who are disabled, care leavers, or armed forces veterans will be guaranteed an interview if they meet the essential criteria and indicate their eligibility on the application form. Sometimes, if lots of people apply, we might not be able to interview everyone who qualifies for the Guarantee. In these cases, we'll interview the candidates who best meet the essential criteria for the job.

Full-time employees work 37 hours for 52 weeks of the year and we offer a generous holiday entitlement. We are open to discussions about working part time or as a job share.

If you are appointed to this role, your starting salary will be at the bottom of the grade. If you provide payslip evidence that your basic pay is greater than the bottom of the grade, we will consider starting you at the point of minimum advantage within the grade.

Equality of pay is extremely important to us. All roles at Sheffield City Council are going through an evaluation process which may result in changes to some pay arrangements from 2026. Read about the new job evaluation process to be introduced at Sheffield City Council.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all individuals, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for everyone and where appropriate to the role the successful applicant will be required to undertake relevant safeguarding checks.