Principal Officer Surveyor

About Us: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF MARKS’ PASSION FOR FAIR HOUSING AND SAFE HOMES Private sector housing enforcement is more than just a job—it’s about making a real impact on people’s lives. Our dedicated professionals work tirelessly to ensure tenants have safe, secure, and well-maintained homes. Take Mark, one of our Principal Officers and a […]

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF MARKS’ PASSION FOR FAIR HOUSING AND SAFE HOMES

Private sector housing enforcement is more than just a job—it’s about making a real impact on people’s lives. Our dedicated professionals work tirelessly to ensure tenants have safe, secure, and well-maintained homes.

Take Mark, one of our Principal Officers and a true expert in tackling poor housing conditions across the city. Mark’s journey started as a trainee, driven by a passion for improving housing standards. With the council’s support, he gained professional qualifications and took on increasingly complex enforcement cases, becoming a leader in his field.

Today, we depend on Mark’s investigative skills to identify and address unsafe housing, from damp and mould to fire safety hazards in high-rise blocks. He ensures landlords meet legal requirements and that tenants live in homes that are safe, secure, and fit for purpose. But enforcement isn’t just about regulations—it’s about people.

When Mark encountered a tenant struggling with severe hoarding and vermin, he didn’t just issue a notice. He took a multi-agency approach, working with support services to help the tenant regain control of their living conditions. His work goes beyond individual cases—he plays a key role in shaping the council’s long-term enforcement strategy, targeting rogue landlords, and driving up housing standards across the city.

If you’re passionate about fair housing and want to make a real difference, join our team and be part of the extraordinary work we do.

The Role:

As a Principal Officer Surveyor, you can make your own powerful contribution to improving the lives of Westminster’s most vulnerable residents by delivering a specialist service that supports them to repair, improve, or adapt their homes and continue living independently in the community. You will manage a complex portfolio of cases across a variety of tenures, delivering a diverse range of adaptations including internal and external communal works, ramps, stair lifts, and complex disability adaptations in tall or listed buildings. You will also carry out Descent Homes Assessments and assessments under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), including support for Emergency Heating Grants.

You will provide advanced assessment, planning, and delivery expertise, ensuring all works comply with legislation, including the Building Safety Act 2022 and are reasonable and practicable under the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. The role involves leading service development initiatives, collaborating with partners such as Building Control and Planning, and investigating solutions to complex adaptations while keeping your skills and knowledge up to date with new products and methods.

You will coordinate and supervise the delivery of adaptations, managing relationships with contractors to maintain high-quality service for residents. Your advanced communication and analytical skills will allow you to identify risks, resolve disputes, and provide guidance to both colleagues and residents, ensuring practical solutions are delivered even in challenging environments with limited space.

In addition, you will support the development of knowledge and skills across the team, mentor and support colleagues and ensure compliance with the Procurement Act 2023 and other relevant legislation. You will take ownership of your caseload, project-manage major adaptations, and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives, maintaining policies and procedures, and promoting best practice across the Home Improvement Agency.

This role provides the opportunity to make a tangible difference in residents’ lives by offering holistic assessments, exploring adaptation options, and supporting people to live safely and independently. You will work in an exciting environment, balancing competing priorities, leading projects and initiatives, and ensuring that every adaptation delivers meaningful improvements to the communities you serve.

About You:

You have significant experience and understanding of your discipline, able to act as a trusted expert and provide guidance across the service. Your track record of overseeing a wide range of grant applications and programmed capital works ensures that quality assurance processes are embedded and that adaptations are delivered to a consistently high standard with excellent customer service.

You are also skilled in responding to complex, high-profile, and politically sensitive complaints from residents, stakeholders, and elected members, both in writing and in person, with a clear awareness of reputational risk. Making sound and appropriate decisions within your discipline, you use your expertise to balance operational requirements with legal, regulatory, and reputational considerations.

Building effective working relationships comes naturally to you. And you are experienced in collaborating with a variety of agencies and professionals to develop policies, procedures, and best practices. An expert in designing and delivering training, you ensure staff are equipped with up-to-date knowledge and skills to perform effectively in their roles.

You are also committed to maintaining high service standards through implementing and overseeing quality assurance processes, reporting frameworks, and identifying training and development needs. Supporting and mentoring colleagues, ensuring the service operates consistently and to a high standard, is also key to this role.

Confident in designing, developing, and managing projects, your work improves service delivery and delivers efficiencies. Your communication skills allow you to influence and educate stakeholders at all levels, presenting complex information clearly both in writing and in person, and driving positive outcomes across the service.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme will automatically be invited to interview, should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a Global Majority (GM), people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’ (formally known as B.A.M.E, Black, Asian and multiple ethnic) background and, while the role is open to all applicants,  we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background, you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this, visit  

As a forward-thinking Council, we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for an interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning, subject to the volume of suitable applicants.